Using Your IR Website Performance to Understand Investor Relations Impact

The foundation of your web presence, your IR website, is a lynchpin for a successful investor relations strategy.  

For IR teams and public companies, your IR website is responsible for sharing critical company financial information, showcasing your company vision and strategy, providing background information on your company and industry, historical data, sharing news, hosting your presentations, providing shareholders with important information, sharing your company's ESG policies and plans, and adhering to regulatory requirements.

Contextual Engagement Insights From Your IR Website

There are many ways to measure and evaluate the performance of your IR website, ranging from completely free to paid solutions with various levels of complexity.

With all of the tools available and so much data at our fingertips, it's really easy to get caught in analysis paralysis when it comes to understanding your website performance. Anonymous data can mean you misinterpret the relevance of your site to its viewership, for example. Is it a prospective investor? Or your mom showing her friends all the work you've done at your company?

Website analytics is the collection, reporting, and analysis of data generated by visitors and their interactions on your site. The primary use of website analytics is to measure, interpret, and understand user behavior, and optimize and gain insight to help you understand if your site is helping you to achieve your IR program goals.

This data can also be used to understand the impact of your website on search engines at critical moments when someone searches for you or information supporting your company's offerings.

Also important to note is that data means nothing when it isn't paired with an actionable insight that you can use, as it's only a view into the past.

IROs should be looking at their website analytics to answer strategic questions such as:

• What content are prospective investors looking at on our website?
• Which key messages or content in our investor outreach is driving interest?
• Are our shareholders engaging with the content we share? Could a lack of engagement be an indicator they aren't receiving value?
• What was the outcome of that news? Did it drive the right audience to our site?
• How much time are we spending on the wrong-fit investors? Which pieces of content or strategies are causing them to engage with us?
• What can we scale or replicate that drove right-fit investor interest?
• Is there an activist investor interested in our company?
• Does the investor community understand our story?

There are many web analytics tools and much data available, but context is king. Looking at data through the context of the IR function and optimizing accordingly can make or break a company's success.

Did You Know?

Irwin IQ, Irwin's website and content intelligence tool, identifies and connects website analytics to investor profiles, activist history, and your company's historical IR activity. It provides you with the right context and contacts so that you can hone in on what's working so you can leverage your IR website to create impact. Irwin IQ is compatible with any investor relations website, regardless of the hosting provider.