What shareholders expect from an investor relations website

Your investors are already on your website

When a listed company publishes their results, where do people go first? Analysts, fund managers, private shareholders and journalists all head straight for the investor relations section of the corporate website. They want the announcement, the presentation and the numbers, and they want them now!

We’ve built investor relations websites for RWC, the multinational manufacturer of water flow and control products, and for Virtus Health, the fertility group, while both were listed on the ASX. Both had the same job: put the right information in front of investors at exactly the right time, without anyone in the IR team having to wait for a developer.

So what should an investor relations website actually include? Let’s start with the rules, because they set the minimum, and then look at what investors really want.

The rules set the minimum

Most stock exchanges expect listed companies to publish certain information on their own website. Here are the rules in the UK, Australia and the US:

AIM companies (London Stock Exchange)

If your company is on AIM, AIM Rule 26⁠ (opens in a new tab) says you must keep a website with a set list of information, free of charge. That includes:

A description of your business (and your investing policy, if you’re an investing company).
Your country of incorporation and main country of operation.
Your current constitutional documents, such as your articles of association.
Any other exchanges or trading platforms your securities trade on.
The number of securities in issue, the percentage not in public hands and your significant shareholders, updated at least every six months, with the date it was last updated.
Any restrictions on transferring your shares.
The corporate governance code you follow, how you comply with it and where you depart from it.

ASX-listed companies

In Australia, the ASX Corporate Governance Council’s Principles and Recommendations⁠ (opens in a new tab) recommend (Recommendation 6.1) that a listed entity provides information about itself and its governance on its website. That means:

A corporate governance page that’s easy to find from your main navigation.
Your directors and senior executives, with photos and short biographies.
Your constitution, board charter and committee charters, plus your governance policies.
Your annual reports and financial statements.
Your announcements to the ASX.
Notices of meetings, with their documents, and webcasts or transcripts of those meetings.

US-listed companies (NYSE and Nasdaq)

In the US, the rules come from two places: the exchange you’re listed on and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

If you’re listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Section 303A of the NYSE Listed Company Manual⁠ (opens in a new tab) says your website must carry:

The charters of your audit, compensation and nominating/corporate governance committees.
Your corporate governance guidelines.
Your code of business conduct and ethics.

They need to be up by the time your IPO closes or within five business days of listing, whichever is earlier, and your proxy statement or annual report has to say they’re on your website and give its address.

On Nasdaq⁠ (opens in a new tab), Rule 5610 says your code of conduct must be publicly available, and your website is the usual place for it. You can also use your website to disclose any waivers of the code, within four business days.

Then there are the SEC’s own rules, which apply whichever exchange you’re on:

Insider share dealings. If you have a corporate website, SEC Rule 16a-3(k)⁠ (opens in a new tab) says you must post your directors’ and officers’ Forms 3, 4 and 5 by the end of the business day after they’re filed, and keep each one there for at least 12 months. Linking to a third-party service that lists them is allowed.
Committee charters. You have to say in your filings whether your committee charters are on your website, and give the address if they are.
Your website as a news channel. Under the SEC’s 2008 guidance⁠ (opens in a new tab), posting news on your website can count as making it public under Regulation FD, but only if investors know your website is where you publish it. That’s a big reason to keep your investor relations section organised and easy to find!

I’m not a lawyer, so please check the current rules with your company secretary, nominated adviser or legal counsel! But you can see the pattern: the rules are all about making information easy to find, complete and up to date.

What investors actually look for

Ticking the regulatory boxes is the starting point. A good investor relations website goes further and makes life easy for the people who use it most.

Colleagues reviewing printed financial reports and charts around a laptop. Image: “People in the Meeting Looking at the Papers”⁠ (opens in a new tab) by Tiger Lily⁠ (opens in a new tab), Pexels License⁠ (opens in a new tab), via Pexels.

An investor centre that’s one click away

Put announcements, results, presentations, reports and governance in one investor centre, linked from every page. RWC’s site, for example, brought their ASX announcements, financial results, investor presentations and governance information together in one place, alongside the share price and their annual reports.

Announcements in order, and easy to search

Investors and analysts often want a specific announcement from two years ago. Give them a filterable list by year and type, with a clear date on everything, and make sure PDFs open with a sensible file name and title.

A reporting calendar

Results dates, AGMs and ex-dividend dates. If investors can see what’s coming, they’ll come back for it, and a calendar shows you’re organised.

Most IR sites show the current share price, usually through a feed from a market data provider. Make sure it shows when the price was last updated, so nobody mistakes a delayed price for a live one.

Email alerts

Let people sign up to hear about new announcements, so they don’t have to keep checking.

The story behind the numbers

Investors aren’t only reading spreadsheets. They want to understand your strategy, your leadership team, your sustainability work and where you’re heading. The RWC site we built covered their acquisition strategy, vision and values, senior leadership team, sustainability and innovation, as well as the international reach of their products.

Accessible reports

Annual reports are often published as huge PDFs that screen readers struggle with. An accessible HTML summary (or an accessible PDF) helps every investor, and it’s good practice under accessibility guidelines too.

Built for results day

Results day is the one day your investor relations website really can’t go down. Traffic spikes the moment an announcement lands, and your IR team is working to the minute.

That’s why the publishing side matters as much as the design:

Scheduling and embargoes. Your team should be able to prepare an announcement, set it to publish at a precise time and trust that it won’t appear a second earlier.
No waiting on developers. Uploading a report or a presentation should be a job for the IR team, not a support ticket.
Hosting that copes with spikes. Caching and a content delivery network keep pages fast when everyone arrives at once.
An audit trail. Knowing who published what, and when, matters when disclosure is regulated.

When the company changes

Companies don’t stay the same forever. They merge, get acquired or are taken private, and the website has to change with them.

Virtus Health is a good example. They were listed on the ASX when we built their global corporate website in 2020, and they were taken private by CapVest Partners in 2022. Because the corporate site ran on the same platform as the group’s clinic websites, it simply carried on serving the business as its audience changed, and we still support it today.

RWC is going through the same kind of change: in September 2026 Brookfield agreed to acquire them.

If your company could be acquired, merge or delist, it’s worth asking your agency now how easily your IR section could be archived, moved or reshaped. Better to know before the deal is announced than after!

A quick checklist

If you’re reviewing your investor relations website, this is where I’d start:

Can a new investor find your latest results in one click from your home page?
Does your site cover everything your exchange’s rules ask for, with a “last updated” date where they require one?
Can your IR team schedule an announcement to the minute without a developer?
Does the site stay fast when traffic spikes on results day?
Can people find an announcement from two years ago in under a minute?
Are your annual reports accessible to people using screen readers?
Is the share price clearly labelled with when it was last updated?

Need a hand?

We build investor relations websites that IR teams can run to the reporting calendar, and you can see how we did it for RWC and Virtus Health. If your IR site is feeling the strain, let’s talk.