How do analysts and business journalists use corporate websites?

Analysts and business journalists – two of the most important target groups for corporate websites. So how do they use your website?

The last few years have seen important changes in behaviour of all audiences. Corporate information is now available on a multitude of formats such as laptops, mobiles, iPads and other devices and from an array of channels such as blogs, Twitter and Wikipedia. It’s not just on the corporate website. So where do your key audiences go and when?

Target groups say they use the websites

According to our research undertaken in May 2011, analysts and business journalists said they use corporate websites to find specific information about a company. But as we all know, what people say and what they do is sometimes different.

Our analysis reveals that corporate websites are increasingly important as a factual information source because they are the single point of reference for verified information. In a multi-channel environment, they are the one place where companies can present all information about the company and its performance to different audiences in a structured way.

Our approach

Step 1 – Identify and analyse key visitor groups: analysts and business journalists

To find out how analysts and business journalists behave on corporate websites, KWD analysed the traffic from several major financial institutions as well as major business dailies such as Financial Time and news sources such as Reuters and Bloombergs. We created a key visitor analysis metric based on where users are coming from and tracked their movements around sites.
Step 2 – Select websites to analyse

Our study covered six large websites that scored strongly in the KWD Webranking 2010. The companies were based in Sweden, UK and the Netherlands and all were December year ends. We used the combined total traffic of the sites and extracted the site behaviour of the analysts and business journalists.

Step 3 – Analyse the data

With the data from the target audiences logged, we were able to identify their behaviours and analyse the trends. The business journals and financial institutions we tracked visited the sites frequently throughout the period and consumed a significant amount of content.

There are several other interesting trends we can observe from the data just by looking at the usage patterns.

Fact 1 – Financial reporting drives traffic to website

Traffic gradually increased towards the reporting dates and peaked on the actual day the financial information was published. There was a rapid drop of traffic after publication.

Traffic patterns:

Full year reports coming out
Annual General meetings, annual report as well as Q1
Q2 report is published
Christmas holiday
Full year reports
Annual General meetings, annual report as well as Q1
Q2 report in the middle of summer
Q3 end of October

Fact 2 – 50 % of the traffic consistently returns

Whilst traffic levels dropped by approx. 50 % between the more intense periods, as shown by the red lines below, these sites were still retaining 50 % of the target group who consistently returned. During the quieter periods investor relations sections, whilst not updated, still provided an important source of corporate information.

As a result, there are two communication opportunities:

•     focus on developing the precise messaging of your website a week before, during and after a reporting event as these periods are when the target audience will visit your website most frequently
•     continue to review and refine your messages during non-peak periods as a significant proportion of the audience continue to return

Fact 3 – Traffic is on average higher during Q1

It’s no surprise that traffic on average is higher during the first quarter of the year. The first three months of the year for companies with December year ends are an intense period with full year reports and a considerable focus on their corporate and financial performance. Although it is also the period with least time available for content managers, it is also the period during the year when companies get the greatest exposure and highest return on their website communication.
Summary

I interpret this as evidence supporting that our key audience for Investor Relations and corporate websites really use and appreciate the websites in their professional work. Our key facts in summary are:

Financial reporting drives key traffic to the site
50 % of the traffic consistently returns, even during slow seasons
Traffic is on average higher during the first quarter

You should leverage these findings in your planning of communication activities to best meet your target group needs as well as making your communication as efficient and effective as possible.