A corporate website doesn't just need to look pretty - it's critical that it works properly too.
Most web agencies can produce great looking designs, but what's their code quality like? Do they create accessible websites? Is their hosting service both fast and reliable? Do they have reliable incoming feeds for Share Price and other IR data? A broken or poorly performing corporate or investor relations website can have major and often unexpected consequences.
With Investor Relations websites, legal compliance is just the starting point
Alongside the rules imposed by the stock exchange you'll almost certainly have heard that website accessibility is a legal requirement. It's true - groups such as the RNIB have threatened to come down hard on websites (especially those from large organisations) that can't be used properly by people with visual impairments and other disabilities.
However, there's a much bigger picture that you also need to consider. A financial one...
Watch that share price!
The quality of your website reflects the quality of your company - surely that much is obvious? If you go to an ecommerce site and find broken links, a poorly thought out checkout process, and images that don't display properly chances are you'll do your online shopping somewhere else. Well, the same is true with potential investors who come across a broken or poorly designed corporate website. Whether they're a small investor looking to top up an ISA, or a pension fund manager looking to invest millions, the smallest hint of problems on your website will affect how that person feels about your company and its quality. This isn't rocket science.
It follows that if people are put off from investing, it can have a knock-on effect on your share price. The effect might be tiny - miniscule even - but for bigger corporations with lots of issued share capital even a fractional percentage point change in share price can have a big effect on the company's market capitalisation.
A free lunch?
Here's the interesting bit - let's do some sums: Typical market capitalisation for a FTSE-250 company is around £700m. If we assume that a broken website has a really tiny effect on the share price - say 0.02%, that's the equivalent of a hundred and forty thousand pounds! We suspect the actual price damage is closer to 0.05% for most sites - we'll leave you to do the sums. Whatever the figure, there's plenty of budget there to create, host and manage a brand new all singing all dancing and totally error free website. Who said there's no such thing as a free lunch?
IPO Websites and AIM Rule 26
Our service aren't just for big FTSE listed companies. If you're currently at the pre-IPO stage, you are no doubt run off your feet trying to get everything ready for the big day. The last thing you'll want to worry about is the website, and ensuring that it meets AIM Rule 26 plus all of the other rules and regulations. Of course, it's not just about compliance - when your company floats you'll be attracting new shareholders, and your coprorate website need to take investor relations seriously if you want these investors, big or small, to take your company seriously.
There's a lot of things that you need to get right, and a website is probably the last thing you want to have to worry about, or micro-manage. This is where we can come to your rescue!
Beyond reponsive design
You're probably seeing an increasing number of people viewing your website from smartphones and tablets. Using a technique called 'responsive design' we can build you a website which works equally well no matter what device is used to access it.
We'll even go so far as adapting the share price information and other investor relation feeds and information from providers such as Hemscott / Morningstar / Investis or other providers, making the tools and information fully mobile friendly — it's a service that you just won't find anywhere else.
And we can go beyond reponsive design, prioritising your content based on a number of factors such as the date, how many times a visitor has browsed your site, what interests they have shown, the search terms they've used, etc.
You mentioned a free lunch?
If you're about to create or re-develop a corporate or IR website we'd love you to consider CST Group for the task. We've an impressive track record, with our sites often topping the SiteMorse FTSE All-Share survey. We can be very flexible in terms of contracts and budgets, and if you take our maintenance and hosting services we can even create the initial site for free. This is all best discussed face to face - we're happy to come anywhere in the UK to meet you - we'll even buy you lunch. Just call us on 01273 621393, or complete our contact form.
To find out more about what we've done for our clients, please view our projects section.
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