Website Strategies

Understanding where the investor website fits into your online communications plan

The investor website is the authority for investors, the source of all needed information. But people don’t rush to an investor website every day. They need to be attracted to it when there’s something on their minds, or when there is news.

Regardless of just how the investor website fits within the overall company website strategy, investors know what they want to see on a site. Read about the highest demand investor website features here.

Strategies for the investor website

Different companies implement slightly different website strategies. Some put investors first on a major corporate site, relying on different brand name sites to present their business and customer activities. We discuss separate investor websites here.

Some companies use their company brand for both group and investors, and without a major online component for their business they can't rely on a single corporate site to address the needs of all different target audiences. Here we discuss corporate websites that do all jobs.

Others have a huge online presence for customers, and rely on a distinct investor centre within the same branding to meet investor needs. Investors generally are happy with this strategy, and are used to finding the link “investors” or similar to have their part of the world revealed to them. An investor centre has the same characteristics as a separate investor website, but needs to be integrated in the navigation.

Related additional website needs

Unlisted public companies hoping to move towards an IPO have specific needs. Their initial website needs are simpler than when eventually listed, but there is still the need to communicate regularly with the investors and other stakeholders. Read about IRM’s suggestions for IPO’s here.

When there’s a transaction on, it’s common to set up a transaction site specifically to deal with the activities of the transaction. We comment on transaction sites here.

Not every investor has English as their first language. Ignoring these investors might be a poor strategy. IRM has some suggestions for a non-english language web presence here.

Micro sites are a common strategy when companies have a web presence need that is addressing a slightly different target audience which might be confused with all the investor or corporate messages. Read about this strategy here.

Driving traffic using news

The ASX Announcement is the key news publication medium for ASX listed companies. Once the announcement is released by ASX, the company strategy should be to publish it on their own channels, “immediately”.

The company managed news channels include the investor website, any email alert service provided by the company, any third party news services in use, a company blog perhaps, and posts to social media channels.

Because of the immediacy of the market and the need to build trust and confidence in investor audiences, company published news should be first on the chosen channels. If some third party published your news before you do, what are investors to think about how much you care about informing them?

If the news items all pull traffic to the investor website, then while people are at the site, other questions will occur to them, and they will look at other web pages. Driving website traffic this way increases overall investor engagement.

Fit with other online media

Social media strategies continue to evolve in Australia. Different companies are moving at different paces. Read IRM's views on investor social media here.

Investors are turning to Twitter as it carries news of Australian companies under their $cashtags. Many businesses are looking to LinkedIn for a more personal style of contact with the news, perhaps directly from the company executives to their own networks. Corporate Facebook pages also carry some investor news and many carry a YouTube channel. There’s other social media channels emerging for investors.

The common thread through social media is that the “read more” button after the teaser is easily set up as a link to the company website or corporate blog.

Preserving your existing investment

Every listed company already has a website, and most feel it’s not easy to replace it. Even though there might be opportunities to improve, the thought of the replacement cost and effort can be daunting.

If you are happy with much of the content, images and style, and are perhaps frustrated with the effort and delay in updating it, or just want more investor features, then IRM site migration might be for you. Read more about it here.

Keeping your website fresh and current

Over time, your website needs to move with technology, additional investor demands, and changes to the business. Ease of updating the content on the website is paramount. A site that is difficult to update will invariably fall into decay.

Technology keeps moving too. The technology behind your website needs to keep up with those changes, or else once again your site will fall away.

IRM addresses these issues, and many more, through its investor-focused website expertise. Read how we can help with managing your domain names and hosting needs here.