Preparing earnings releases for the Web

By: Dominic Jones  Related: Best Practices for Webcast Archives

EARNINGS releases are important disclosure devices that should be written and formatted to make it easy for investors and the media to obtain essential material information as rapidly as possible.

How you write and format your releases should reflect the realities of online behavior.

Studies have found that the vast majority of IR website users access earnings releases on the day they are released, with many analysts accessing them as soon as they're made available. Time is of the essence to these users. They want to be able to obtain as much essential information as possible in the shortest time.

Writing releases that quickly convey essential information is a challenge for any business communicator. But when you add the unique environment of the Internet to the communications mix, the challenge becomes much harder.

Consider, for example, that the average page view on the Internet typically is less than 60 seconds, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. This is not a lot of time for investors to obtain useful information from your release.

Also consider that researchers have found that people read slower online than on paper. Researchers at Sun Microsystems estimated in a study that it is 25% slower to read from a screen than from paper. We discuss some of the reasons for this in our article Writing for IR Websites.