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• Tells investors you're in the game. XML has the ability to greatly improve business efficiency, productivity and information sharing. It can improve the quality of internal reporting which management uses to steer business success. This will become readily apparent to investors and they will be looking to see which companies are making use of the technology.

Given the benefits of using XML, we think it is a matter of time before all IR websites will use the technology. However, how soon you adopt it will depend on several factors, cost being one of them.

Shifting your IR website to XML involves greater upfront development costs than using an aggregator service. This is because you will design your site yourself, either using internal web development resources or farming the project out to a design/web development firm.

However, this can be offset by reduced maintenance costs, especially if you bypass your current aggregator by developing your own site management tool and taking time to source XML data feeds from direct suppliers such as stock exchanges, regulatory repositories, and information vendors.

I want to switch, what should I do?
Along with the greater flexibility that XML provides goes an increased imperative for IR website owners to be careful about how they apply the technology. Having almost free reign to design a site in any way you wish heightens the risk that you will do things that go against best practice, good judgment or even established convention.

Anyone wanting to develop an IR website based on XML should at minimum go through the following four steps:

1. Develop site blueprints: The very first step if you are planning to move your site to XML is to develop a comprehensive blueprint for your new site. Since XML gives you complete flexibility to customize the structure and design of your site, this blueprint should reflect the unique nature of your company and the needs of your audience.

You can develop your own site blueprint (see How to structure a site that works for your investors for ideas) or you can hire information architecture designers to do it for you.

Your blueprint developers should ideally be skilled in both investor relations and the various aspects of website design, including technology platforms, usability and accessibility. While you will occasionally find web development firms that provide these skills in-house, you will most often have to use an independent information architect.

The main benefit of using independent information architects is that they essentially act as a proxy for your own thinking and best interests. As such, their recommendations tend to focus on what is best for your site rather than on what is easiest for the graphic designers and programmers to implement.

Your site blueprints serve two main purposes:

• They give your site developers the basis on which to provide you with a detailed proposal and fee structure; and,
  
  
• They help to speed up the site development process by telling the developers exactly what they have to build.

2. Choose your data vendors and ISP: Your site blueprints most likely will call for content that requires you to subscribe to third-party data. In choosing data vendors, you will need to consider a number of factors.

Cost is obviously an important consideration. It may be cheaper to use several direct data sources than go through an aggregator. However, this has to be balanced against the convenience of using a single source for all your data feeds. If you don't intend building your own site management tool for adding and updating content on your site, then you will want to use an aggregator service.

If your company does not have its own web servers or does not currently outsource web hosting to an Internet service provider, you will need to identify where your new site will be located. In choosing a web hosting service, you should take into account your current site traffic and security requirements and ensure that the provider can meet your site's needs.

Most web hosting services will be able to accommodate the average IR website with ease, but you still need to do your research. If you don't have internal IT resources, your web developers will be able to suggest appropriate web hosts for your site.

3. Choose your web developers: Choosing a web development firm is often the trickiest part of the site building process. That's why its essential to get detailed proposals based on your site blueprints from several firms.

In evaluating these proposals, remember that you don't always get what you pay for. Clients are often impressed by the wrong things. They will look at examples of the developers' work and be taken in by the design of the product rather than the substance and technology behind them.

We always counsel clients to look at the breadth of the team's expertise, including experience with XML, XSLT, XHTML, Flash and javascript. Most important, however, is to ask to see examples of the site management tools that they have developed to help their clients manage their sites. Without a well designed and flexible site management tool, you are likely going to incur unnecessary costs every time you want to add or change something on the site.

Ideally, your web developers should have an in-house web writer, someone experienced in writing content for the Internet. You will need this person to write (or edit if you are doing it yourself) some of the navigational and meta content (see our article What's so important about page titles? for more about meta content).

It's also a good idea to involve your information architect in the site development process. This helps to ensure that the vision for the site is implemented as it was conceived and intended. It also means you will have an expert on board should any aspects of the site structure need to be changed.

4. Test, monitor and adapt your site: In truth, the site building process is never done. Practices change and new ideas spring to the fore. A year in Internet time is about 18 weeks in real time.

Make it a routine part of your site management process to completely review every page on your site and your peers' sites at least once per year. These annual reviews or audits not only alert you to shortcomings on your site, but they serve as a rich source of ideas for how to improve it going forward.