Corporate websites have to cater to many audiences.  I’m surprised, though, that investor relations pages are often not prominent in corporate sites, given both that shareholders are a crucial audience for public companies, and the emphasis on more integrated stakeholder communications.

I looked at 30 publicly traded companies across two fields that interest me – financial technology/infrastructure firms, and regional banks – categorised the routes by which investor relations content fits into the site architecture.

A “meganav” (or mega menu) is a large navigation panel that appears when a user clicks or hovers over the main menu. It typically spans the full width of the page, with links grouped into columns and sometimes supported by related content blocks or images. The line between meganavs and simple drop-down menus is increasingly blurred, as many drop-downs are now designed with more complex layouts that resemble meganavs.

What our review tells us about IR on websites

• Investor relations generally doesn’t merit a place in either the primary site navigation or the secondary site navigation.
• There’s a notable differentiation between the two groups: regional banks are much more likely to simply stick the IR portal page at the bottom of the home page (sometimes in small print!), alongside customer complaints and the like.
• The financial technology firms largely use dropdowns, with or without hover, or simply a meganav.
• Nearly all the financial technology firms take you to what is effectively an IR microsite; with regional banks this is generally less sophisticated.
• The signposting to investor relations generally lumps it in with a variety of other matters (recruitment, sustainability). Language like “who we are”, “company” or “about us” don’t intrinsically say “for investors” – you need to know what you are looking for.

Why do companies hide investor material?

First, investor relations pages, by their nature, sometimes contain bad news and hard information.  That’s different from the rest of a company website where the marketing and brand has much more leeway to present an image and information in a positive light.

Secondly, while everything a public company does online needs to bear in mind financial reporting obligations, companies generally like keeping the IR pages with financial information in one place, not least to ensure the higher IR and legal review that needs.

Ultimately, the IR and communications teams in many companies are quite separate, and while they rub along well enough, there’s quite a high barrier of interests and understanding.  I suspect that IR teams rather prefer considerable separation.  They assume investors aren’t interested in non-IR content – often true – and they want the IR section to be flawless. They also believe other parts of the site don’t need the same level of scrutiny, though in practice most public company content is still reviewed with an IR lens.

Quite how many people are looking at IR pages and presentations remains hard to judge.  It is highly time dependent – ie people most often look around the filing of new financial information and results, especially for equity analysts covering a stock.

Behind the scenes the development of the IR section is most-often siloed from the main corporate website, leveraging an out of the box platform or tool (these are often provided free to companies at the time of IPO). Basic functionality often limits the experience in these IR sections, making integration with the wider website – sharing the strategic vision, values, and expertise of the firm –  critical.

Implications of this approach

Often all “corporate” press releases on the site are deemed to be investor relations and placed there.  This can make them invisible or hard to find to other audiences, when often the news is highly relevant to other audiences like customers and prospects.

Similarly, boards of directors and executive teams are usually hidden away on the IR sections.  While you wouldn’t want senior executives to dominate the home page, they are the face of the company.

Beyond press releases, the information in financial results decks often contains crucial strategy information that is relevant to many audiences.  And often that strategy or product roadmap information is not really replicated elsewhere on the website in a format that is digestible.  That is especially true of course for capital markets or investor days where companies give much more of a deep dive.

For many fintech infrastructure firms, banks and asset managers are likely to be both your clients and your investors, which is another argument for closer integration of the IR content within your main site structure.

The AI Elephant in the Room

Most of the site architectures I looked at, probably, were designed pre ChatGPT.  Now we face a world where AI search is decreasing website – how you show up to a machine is as important has how you look to human visitors.

We suspect many firms have just begun to think through how this revolution will trigger needed change on their websites.  While blocking AI bots to keep control of your messaging is possible, it seems a counterproductive approach that will simply reduce your profile.  Much better is to keep optimizing your website content – including your financial content – for the LLMs.

Probably hardcore financial audiences will continue to look at the actual decks, though even that is changing as new AI offerings for financial research arrive. (Earlier this month Anthropic announced “Claude for Financial Services”, an agent which connects directly with industry providers platforms like Morningstar, Pitchbook, S&P Global, and Snowflake.)

Some recommendations

• If your investor relations link is at the bottom of your home page, consider elevating it into a secondary navigation bar above your primary navigation bar or directly within your primary nav.
• Consider what related areas like press releases might be made higher profile on your site. Think about the content within the IR section that’s relevant for broader audiences. Interrogate IR pages through the lens of your overall brand strategy and storytelling; are you sharing that deliberately with your IR audiences as you are across the rest of your site?
• Grow your understanding and keep testing on how AI tools are consuming your content and reporting on you. Be clear what formats of your financial reporting can be consumed by AI and adapt accordingly.

Companies in my sample

Financial Technology: ACI Broadridge Factset Fiserv, FIS,, Global Payments., MarketAxess Moody’s NICE, Experian, Jack Henry, Nasdaq, Worldline SS&C, Temenos, TradeWeb,

Regional banks: Citizens, Comerica Fifth Third, First Citizens Huntington, Keybank M&T PNC, Regions Republic Trust, U.S. Bank, Western Alliance

Andrew Marshall is the managing director of Cognito Americas