And to answer that, it's helpful to think of what it would be like if you didn't have a website. At a seminar recently, not one person could remember life in investor relations before the Internet. This was a group of senior practitioners, many with more than 15 years work experience, and not one could remember what it was like before "stuff" was "put on the Internet."

The point is the Internet and corporate websites are now so much part of the scenery that we've come to take them for granted. We can't imagine the investor relations profession without them. However, at the same time, we don't fully appreciate what we have.

The widespread integration of the Internet into investor relations communication and securities disclosure ushers in several profound realities and challenges that companies and their communications specialists need to take account of.

Take something as basic as the fact that most information today is consumed from a computer screen rather than from the printed page. Or that the audience for corporate information has mushroomed, driven in large part by retail investors. Or that companies are constantly being required to disclose increasing amounts of information, investors are being required to read it, and that each day still only has 24 hours.

Each on its own is more significant than you might at first realize, but taken together they create something of a "Perfect Storm" in which business communicators of all stripes are challenged to adapt to remain successful at what they do. The shift away from paper means adjusting to a new medium where "user experience" becomes the watchword for communications effectiveness.

So what is user experience?
Simply put, user experience is the result of a myriad of individual communications, design and technical inputs combining to shape the experience of the people who use your company's online information. The quality of that experience in turn helps to shape users' opinions and perceptions of the company itself.

Just like a messy storefront, poor user experience can hurt your company's image and credibility.

Just as bad customer service or a messy storefront can undermine the image of a company in the eyes of consumers, so too can a poorly designed, managed and coded website.

User experience is not about slick design, video game-like interactivity and using the latest technologies, though these do play a role. It is not constrained by the size of your budget or your access to technical expertise.

It is much more about common sense and thinking like a user. This means taking a few basic realities into account when communicating essential information to people online, including:

• The Internet is an interactive, dynamic medium that requires more complex user participation than traditional passive media.
• People access and consume information differently on the Internet than from paper and other media.
• There are a lot more distractions online and users control their own experience.
• The Internet is non-intrusive and mostly non-portable, making it more difficult to attract and hold people's attention.

• Architecture and Graphic Design. Is the site structured, laid out and designed around user needs and motivations? Does it look credible?
• Navigation. Is the navigation assistance easy to use, intuitive and sufficient?
• Content. Is the content optimized for online audiences or merely repurposed print content? How does the level of disclosure compare to that of similar companies? Is their a perceptible bias in the content?
• Formats. Are we locking up important content behind barriers of non-HTML formats, such as PDF, streaming media and Flash?
• Off-line messaging. Are other communications channels consistent and integrated with the online one?

Good user experience supports good disclosure
User experience is important from a corporate disclosure policy and regulatory perspective. Good user experience practices can improve disclosure by making information more accessible and easier to use and easier to understand.

Unfortunately, disclosure laws have failed to keep pace with advances in technology and the opportunities it provides to improve communication. Four years ago, the SEC under Arthur Levitt introduced the plain English requirement for corporate disclosure. That rule, as young and as important as it is, is already in need of an overhaul.

Plain language is just one component of providing a good online experience from a disclosure and communications perspective. Other things like file formats, navigation and usability can undermine even the plainest language. Companies can, and often do, deliberately opt for poor user experience tactics so that they can obscure information. Others are plain ignorant of how their poor online practices undermine good disclosure.

The SEC's guide for plain English is begging for a section on online user experience. A conservative guess, based on statistics of global information production, would suggest that upwards of 90% of disclosure information is being accessed online rather than in other formats like print. At the same time, regulators are looking to increase the extent to which companies use the Web for disclosure.

All of this makes it imperative that the Plain English rule be broadened to include issues of web usability and accessibility. If it did, we would not be seeing practices today which amount to de facto selective disclosure, obfuscation and burying of vital information based on how information is disseminated rather than to whom and when.

NEXT: How format choices undermine Reg. FD >