If you make it hard to find information online, you're telling investors that you're not committed to letting them know how you're doing. And they'll go elsewhere. On most of the corporate Web sites surveyed, it took no more than three clicks to reach a company's latest earnings release. But the number of clicks to a key piece of information is not the only measure of accessibility. They tend to put their general corporate or IR hyperlinks in less-prominent places, typically at the bottom of the home page.
Organization is also important for helping guide investors.
Financial press releases, experts say, should be grouped separately. Most visitors to a company's IR pages are either current or prospective shareholders. Increasingly, sites include a corporate background, history, and fact sheet buried behind various links on the IR home page. But few use that main page to clearly and concisely state the investment value offered to shareholders. Others use the IR home page to promote their business models and market positions.