Your investor relations website is one of the first places potential investors go to find information about your company and stock. No doubt, your IR site meets regulatory compliance requirements, but how can you make sure it is compelling visitors to take a closer look at your stock?
Swap out boilerplate for your Wall Street elevator pitch – On the landing page, rather than repeating the ‘About Us’ boilerplate from your press releases, consider making the company description more engaging by presenting your elevator pitch for investors and analysts. Make it compelling, concise, and watch out for jargon or acronyms that readers won’t understand. Avoid ‘corporate speak’ and tell investors directly what you do, how you do it and why it matters like this example from ChargePoint.
Tell visitors why they should invest in your company – With more than 6,000 publicly traded companies, competition for capital is fierce, but it is amazing to see how many IR websites still don’t showcase their investment thesis or the reasons to invest in their company. This is a huge missed opportunity. Valens Semiconductor does a great job with their “Why invest” section by not only concisely listing their investment highlights but also including icons to add visual interest to the bulleted list.
Use video to effectively and efficiently convey your investment story and showcase your leadership team – Most people are visual learners and are more likely to retain video content than text. Videos are one of the most compelling ways to engage the Wall Street audience because they offer company executives a unique way to convey their passion about their businesses or succinctly communicate their stock story.
Also read: Videos for investor relations: The new “must” for telling your story to The Street
Leverage charts, graphs, photos, and infographics to tell your story and engage viewers – Staying on the theme of visual learning and retention — use colorful charts and graphs to highlight data and reinforce the information that has been presented. Use icons and infographics to call out important information rather than lists of facts. Humanize your board, leadership team and staff by incorporating photos.
Make it easy for investors to get what they need and want – Investors are coming to your IR site hoping it will be a one-stop shop for all the information they need to conduct their due diligence. Your latest investor presentation should be prominently displayed on your IR site, along with three years of documents – including quarterly earnings releases, 10-Qs, earnings call transcripts, quarterly supplemental information, annual reports, and proxy statements. By providing all this information in a quickly accessible resource center, you’ll be making work a little easier for your investors and potential investors. We also recommend creating and posting a two-page fact sheet that provides a quick overview of your company and your investment merits.
Create a dedicated sustainability/ESG page – Investor interest in sustainability and ESG has increased substantially over the past several years. Make sure investors and potential investors can quickly access the information they are looking for by providing a dedicated sustainability tab on the navigation bar of your investor relations website. Kick off your sustainability page with a commitment statement that explains why sustainability matters to your company and stakeholders. Provide links to all your key sustainability, ESG, and governance documents such as reports, policies, or codes of conduct in one spot. Make your dedicated sustainability page a two-way street by offering a way for investors to ask questions or request a conversation with your Investor Relations or Sustainability contact.
Keep your IR website up to date – Nothing is worse than visiting an IR website with dated or incorrect information. We recommend adding a quarterly audit of your IR site to your earnings call checklist to make sure it happens. While you are at it, you can look for ways to update content, images, and videos. Remember that even if you use an IR website partner to host your site, certain updates such as management changes and analyst coverage are not automated and need to be made in real time by your IR team.
Customize FAQs so investors don’t have to reach out to IR for basic information – A robust FAQ is an important resource for investors looking for quick answers to commonly asked questions. The FAQ is an essential tool for retail investors, who now comprise about 30 percent of stock ownership in the U.S. Cut down on incoming calls by providing customer service email addresses and phone numbers for your transfer agent, direct stock purchase plan, or other third-party shareholder services.
Align your IR website branding with your corporate branding – When investors go to your IR site, your corporate identity should be immediately recognizable. Logos, color schemes, and fonts should all mirror the corporate site. Keep navigation simple and intuitive.
Know who is visiting your IR website – Chances are that a good percentage of the investors who visit your IR site are thinking about investing in your stock. From both an offensive and defensive perspective, this is important information to know. At least quarterly, review the list of people who have signed up to receive alerts from your site and look for potential targets for your next non-deal roadshow or conference 1x1 meetings. Also review website analytics to see where visitors are spending time on your site and where they’re not. Use this information to drive content updates.
IR website best practices are evolving quickly and it’s important to stay abreast of ever-changing best practices. If you’re interested in taking your IR website to the next level, we’d love to help.