As an IRO, you’re an expert in connecting the dots between market performance, online behavior, and your shareholder base. You know exactly the right thing to say at the right moment when targeting new investors, clinching even more numbers for your company.
Despite your industry know-how, you aren’t an award-winning web designer, so your usual self-reliance fails you when it comes time to launch a new investor relations site. That’s where this article comes into play. Rounding up the top 5 design tips for IR web design reveals the key steps to creating an effective site for your IR program.
1. Create Engaging Landing Pages
In the age of SEO, there’s a good chance your investors won’t first visit your homepage to navigate to the information they want. Instead, they’ll type in a search of your brand’s name and whatever data they might be looking for—whether it’s annual filings (10-K), governance documents, or the latest quarterly earnings.
Direct navigation underscores the importance of your landing pages, as they might be the first thing your investors interact with altogether. Landing pages open the opportunity to create targeted content that appeals to your investors.
2. Accessible Design
How accessible is your website? You might be surprised to realize that the average site poses numerous challenges for people with disabilities. Multiple pop-ups can interfere with screen readers; low contrast or small text can make reading blurbs difficult for people with low vision; and A/V content without transcripts can be challenging for deaf and Hard-of-hearing visitors.
Roughly 1.3 billion people live with disabilities today, so your design decisions can either welcome or lock out a staggering number of visitors.
To ensure your site remains inclusive, work with an investor relations firm like Q4 that offers industry-leading accessibility. Through a combination of manual remediation of code and UX design, the investor relations websites from Q4 conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to build inclusive digital experiences for investors, analysts, and media.
3. Establish Your Brand’s Dashboard
Dashboards with modular, grid-like layouts are growing increasingly popular with web designers. Not only does this add structure to your site, but it also makes it easy for your visitors to glean a broad understanding of your brand with just a glance.
4. Be Mobile Friendly
According to Statista, roughly 59% of all web traffic in 2022 came from mobile devices, and experts forecast mobile browsers will continue to grow in the next five years.
With more than half of your visitors exploring your site from a phone or tablet, it’s never been more important to ensure your site is mobile-friendly. Great design transposes your content to suit the device your visitor uses, ensuring a unified visitor experience across all platforms.
5. Make it Easy to Share on Socials
No site design is complete without the requisite list of social media icons at the bottom of your page. Most experts believe you should cater your icons to the platforms your investors use, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. But don’t overlook other accounts. According to a recent study, public-facing corporate blogs have increased, and now 1 in 12 Fortune 500 companies have TikTok.
These five tips should get you started. Consider talking to an IR firm for even greater insights into the latest IR trends.
