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Mystery after emu spotted 'on the run' in village

Do not "approach or attempt to catch the emu unless you have experience", a charity says.




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'My Instagram got disabled and I don't know why'

Emily Sutcliffe says it is "unfair" she has lost her account documenting life with her two sons.




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Murder probe launched after body found in hotel

Anyone who may have seen suspicious activity near the Blackpool hotel is urged to contact police.




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"We built our dream house together"

Zara and Giuliano from Reading designed and built their dream home with no experience.




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Slough fire: "My life feels like it's on hold"

Talha from Slough has been living in a serviced apartment since the fire in August.




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Football club back home after six years away

Youth games restarted at Faraday Road last year but the first senior men's game was on Saturday.




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Armistice Day silence interrupted by protester

A single protester has a sign wrestled off her during the silence at Forbury Gardens in Reading.




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More e-scooters seized as riders flout law

Officers are seizing e-scooters “immediately” off the streets if they are seen in public places.




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Woman lost boots in peat bog before rescue on walk

The woman had managed to walk an hour in her socks before calling for help.




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'I want others to access the therapy that helped me'

Patients and staff say they fear for the future of mental health access in Derbyshire.




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Football supporter banned for homophobic comment

The fan is barred from attending any matches for two seasons, following an investigation.




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Not-so-smart parking traps 60 in bowls club

Club members are not exactly bowled over when a Smart car driver blocks them in their car park.




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Burial plot plan stolen during church safe heist

The Chapel and School Room church says the loss of the document will make it "harder to do burials".




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Reddich MP "vital football remains affordable"

MP Chris Bloore wants increased fan representation on club boards to protect the game.




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‘Frustrated disbelief’ at another Hitchin fire

The Labour MP for Hitchin, Alistair Strathern, reacts to the blaze in Wallace Way.




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'Meeting my mother's murderer was unsettling'

Ian McKay, who answered ransom calls 55 years ago, travels to Trinidad to meet the man behind them.




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MP objects to plan to house asylum seekers in hotel

Chris Curtis, the Labour MP for Milton Keynes North, says it is "is neither safe nor appropriate".




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Mooted club returns great for game - Premiership boss

The boss of Premiership Rugby says he welcomes the prospective return to professional rugby of Wasps, Worcester and London Irish.




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Pears sign Notts spinner Singh on three-year deal

Worcestershire sign Nottinghamshire spinner Fateh Singh on a three-year deal, following his loan spell at New Road in the 2024 season.




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Mother in CCTV plea after theft from baby's grave

Tasha Morris lost her son Oscar during surgery after a serious car crash in August.




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Cumbrian 106 and not out

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Protesters to fight cross-border giant pylon plans

The pylons, spanning 50 miles, will run wind farm energy into England but will dissect the Borders countryside.




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Safety improvements at accident 'hot spot' begin

New road markings are being installed on the slip road following a fatal crash in September.




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Mary Queen of Scots landmark to be lit up for show

Workington Hall is famous for having provided shelter to Mary Queen of Scots.




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'Precious' WWI photos help document fallen

The Museum of East Dorset analysed information from every First World War memorial in the region.




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Club legend hangs up boots after 618 appearances

Wimborne Town centre-back Scott Arnold amassed the last of his 618 appearances against Weymouth.




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Spy poisoning sparked 'incident of scale not seen'

A counter terror commander tells an inquiry the Salisbury poisonings were “truly unprecedented".




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"Claude" author's inspiration

Coventry author Alex T Smith shares where his writing journey began.




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City car park set to reopen as others close

A parking area shut during Covid is reopening to help offset the spaces lost during regeneration work.




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Christmas is not cancelled, council boss says

Coventry is cutting the amount it spends on Christmas celebrations.




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Attempted murder charge after man hurt in shooting

A man in his 20s remains in hospital with serious facial injuries after shots were fired at a park.




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Welcome to Wroxham (we’re not in Wales)

Wroxham FC missed out on Hollywood fame but just one letter.




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No surgery for Forsyth but injuries not clearing up for Canaries

Norwich midfielder Gabriel Forsyth will not need surgery on a knee injury but will be out for more than a month.




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Villagers win five-year battle to use footpath

A Planning Inspectorate finds the path was "once a highway" so can therefore "always" be a highway.




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Charity helps disabled people access beauty spots

A Norwich disability group thanks a charity for making a city beauty spot more accessible.




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Boycott Wordle – New York Times workers plead, DNA firm disappears without trace

‘Don’t play Wordle’ is the plea from striking New York Times workers who are complaining about what they say are unfair labour practices. The New York Times Tech Guild, which […]

The post Boycott Wordle – New York Times workers plead, DNA firm disappears without trace appeared first on Tech Digest.




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Protected: the devil wears dior

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.




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Why haven’t Spotify released an offical pre-save tool?

Back in November 2016 Music Ally wrote an article about how Laura Marling fans could pre-save her new album on Spotify. This was the first ever pre-save. This functionality wasn’t (and still isn’t) an official Spotify tool, it was put together by David Emery (who now works at Apple Music) who was VP of global...

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Spotify to stop displaying playlist follower counts…possibly

Yesterday I noticed that the Spotify Windows desktop app had changed and instead of a “follow” button under a playlist there was now a heart icon. If you hover over the heart it says “Save to Your Library” and when you click on it the playlist appears with all of the other playlists that you...

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Playlist placement is not a marketing strategy

Last Friday (19th July 2019) an independent artist’s debut single was placed at the top of Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist and Apple Music’s Best of the Week playlist in the UK. Not only that but at the time of writing this, 5 days later the song is in a total of 54 Spotify editorial...

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The importance of Spotify save rates and how to get on Discover Weekly

We all know that getting a song added to an editorial or algorithmic playlist on Spotify can help boost streams and lead to more fans discovering your music. It’s well documented that you need to submit your upcoming releases for editorial submission via either Spotify For Artists or Spotify Analytics. But how do you get...

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Lockdown Photography (Part One)

When this whole horrible COVID19 experience started—back when we thought maybe we’d be in lockdown for a few weeks, not a few months to a year—I thought to myself that at least it might be something worthy of documenting with my camera. I considered the world so changed and strange in this moment in time […]




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How to build an investor relations area for your website with HubSpot

“Investors, both individual and professional, want more than just the data that independent services can provide. They want the company’s own story and investment vision. What they don’t want is to wade through complex or irrelevant information.” Investor Relations on Corporate Websites, Nielsen Norman Group

Understand investor jobs-to-be-done

Primary users of investor relations areas on a website include, obviously, investors themselves but also analysts and financial journalists. There is an important secondary audience of potential customers and employees too. But the core audience is generally looking for:

  • Company background and overview
  • Press releases
  • Stock exchange filings
  • One-page financial overview
  • Annual reports
  • Quarterly reports
  • Historical financial information
  • Executive biographies
  • Share price information
  • Press and IR contact details
  • Corporate governance information

Of course, each company will go beyond statutory reporting to add content and user journeys specific to their needs. For example, if they are dealing with specific events in their company history, such as acquisitions, crises or if they are approaching an IPO.

Interestingly, according to NN/Group, some of the fancier functionality that you often see on an IR site, such as webcasts, slides and investment calculators, were less important to real users. “People research company financials are more interested in getting facts quickly than in the technology used to deliver them.”

Best practice examples

GE Aerospace does well with very clear navigation on a fast-loading site that is designed to get people to the information they are looking for quickly.

Microsoft’s IR site clearly surfaces stock price information with a tidy design and recent company news, but we are not fans of carousels as a user interface solution.

In contrast, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) has the leanest, text-only IR page, which, like GE’s, aims to get visitors to key information as quickly as possible. Notably, they offer HTML and PDF versions of key reports, and we think this is good practice. PDFs are not great for usability but have an important role in communicating statutory information in a compliant way, so it’s important to find a user-friendly, SEO-friendly parallel structure to sit alongside them.

Michelmersh combines Microsoft’s visual approach with direct access to the most important information.

Core and optional functionality

We use a tool called Octopus to collaborate with clients to design a website’s information architecture and the high-level structure of individual pages.

For investor relations areas, the following site map templates from NN/Group are good starting points for high, medium and low-priority content. But each client is different and so understanding client needs and their users’ needs is always a project in itself.

Don’t forget basic website usability

For more information about how Articulate tackles the website design and development process, including information architecture and user journeys, see How we build websites at Articulate. For the end results, take a look at our Portfolio.

We think all sites - and all visitors - deserve a well-designed, easy-to-use website that helps them find the information they want. In particular, this means that IR areas need to be:

  • Mobile-friendly. The widespread use of PDFs makes many IR sites difficult to use on mobile devices, representing an opportunity for forward-thinking companies to improve the user experience by offering HMTL options.
  • Searchability. IR information should be searchable alongside other site content, either with a domain-specific search box (i.e. just the IR section) or as part of an integrated site-wide search.
  • Accessibility is a basic requirement for a modern website, yet 97 percent of websites have fundamental accessibility issues. Designing for accessibility is good for every visitor. For example, our blog’s speed reading mode and audio player help people engage with our content whether they have specific needs or not. See our article about why accessibility is crucial for website design.
  • Loading speed. Google and GE prioritise loading speed and ‘time to find’ for visitors over fancy imagery and functionality. This is in line with NN/Group’s user study findings. Some clients prefer more fizz and ginger on their IR sites as part of their investor brand, but this should never come at the expense of loading speed. For more on improving Core Web Vitals (as Google calls them) see: Don't lose traffic because of Google’s Core Web Vitals.
  • SEO. Investors, journalists and advisors, like most of us, use Google to find information. IR areas should get the same SEO attention as the rest of the site. For more on our approach to SEO see: The ultimate SEO guide for B2B technology companies.
  • PDFs vs. web pages. IR pages are loaded with PDFs for annual reports, statutory filings, and other important documents. It may be the case that these files have to be in PDF format—we’re not lawyers, so we can’t say for certain—but we think it would be valuable, as with Google, not to also make them available as web pages, even if it is a high-level summary page with a link to the downloadable PDF. There are strong usability reasons to avoid PDF files if at all possible.
  • Carousels. We strongly recommend against Carousels. Buy us a pint, and we’ll bore for England about why.
  • Use of videos, webcasts and podcasts. IR pages often feature investor briefings and other content in video format. This should never be a substitute for clear, scannable, searchable text. Where possible, provide transcripts or summaries. Where possible, provide short (<4 minutes) highlight reels as well as longer content. Videos should have captions and chapter headings so that people can find what they need quickly. Never autoplay videos.

Examples of investor-specific functionality

Company overview

“Offer a brief company overview that highlights a few significant facts, along with a link to more detailed corporate information.” For example, Causeway’s website has this succinct summary right on its homepage as well as more detailed information in a ‘Why us’ section.

Biographies

“Provide information about the company’s high-level managers, including each person’s name and job title, a recent picture, and a link to a full biography,” advises The Nielsen Norman Group. For example, HealthHero has a really easy-to-use, highly visual, and on-brand biographies section on its About Us page.

Press information

Journalists don’t just need press information, they need relevant, high-resolution images, logos, PR contacts and company information.

Press releases

Your news page should look like high-end news site or blog with all the support infrastructure such as the ability to sign up for alerts, search for specific information, filter and sort the information, as on this example from TCN.

ESG reports. Your investor brand goes beyond statutory reporting. Increasingly, environmental, social and governance information influences investment decisions and build investor confidence. HPE does a great job of communicating its progress in this area, and, ahem, we think our own Impact Report is pretty good, too. (Related to this, see our guide to establishing a strong ESG tone of voice.)

Security, availability, access controls and approvals

  • Security and access control. IR areas often include market-sensitive information such as earnings announcements or new product introductions. For this reason (and others), it is important that any content management system (CMS) used for IR pages should have robust security and access controls, meaning that only authorised users can add or modify IR pages. We recommend HubSpot Content Hub which has granular user permissions, access control to specific assets (e.g. individual web pages) and (with an Enterprise tier) SSO integration and role-based permissions.
  • Content approvals. HubSpot also has the option to require approvals before website changes are published. This may be valuable to ensure that legally responsible people, e.g. directors, have a final review and approval of statutory updates to the site, even if they delegate the content creation to others.
  • Scheduling for publication. With time-sensitive and embargoed information, it is important to be able to set a specific publication time and date for content so that you can prepare the pages in advance but make sure they are published at the right time. With HubSpot, this is possible for pages and blog/new posts.

How Articulate can help

We design and code signature websites using our proprietary Nucleus technology, which are hosted on HubSpot Content Hub (CMS). See our website services page for more information.

Brochure websites are old-school. Instead, our team will build you a marketing engine that drives traffic, leads and customers, all while telling your brand story.

If you’d like an SEO, usability, or content review of your investor relations website or if you’d like us to help build a new one, please get in touch.




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Racist abuse is 'part of' football - Forde

Racism is 'unfortunately part of' football said Bristol Rovers forward Shaq Forde, after he was sent online abuse last month.




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Bristol bus boycott Dr Paul Stephenson dies at 87

Dr Stephenson led the Bristol Bus Boycott in 1963.




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Thurrock plans to sue other councils over finances

The council claims it was given bad advice over solar investments that left it with a £1.5bn debt.




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Four arrested after protests at defence firm

Palestine Action said its members blocked the entrance to two Elbit Systems UK sites in Bristol.




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Activists bailed after protests at defence firm

The activists, who staged protests outside a defence firm on Tuesday, are released on police bail.




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What's the future of the football league aged 120

The Bristol Downs League has been going for almost 120 years but how can they solidify its future?




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Ariana Grande Spotted with Ex, Big Sean

When Ariana Grande wrote “could get it again” next to Big Sean’s picture in her “Thank U, Next” video, she might not have been joking. The two were spotted hanging out yesterday, and maybe they were recording new music, maybe she was bouncing back to that dick, or maybe both. While ex-fiance Pete Davidson has […]

The post Ariana Grande Spotted with Ex, Big Sean appeared first on HecklerSpray.