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Online annual reports as a way to present your company

The annual report does not have to end up as a PDF in the downloads section. Online, the mandatory document becomes a channel that makes figures accessible and supplies the context along with them.

Annual reports have a reputation for being dry. Their circulation is correspondingly limited: printed, as a PDF, once a year. An online annual report changes one thing above all: it can be found, linked to and read without having to be downloaded first.

What an online annual report is

The annual report provides information on the past financial year. At its core are the annual financial statements with balance sheet, income statement and notes. The online version is not a different publication, but the same information as a website of its own: responsive, multilingual, searchable and linked to the rest of your online presence.

Two people at a desk discuss printed bar and pie charts, with a calculator and a laptop next to them.
In print, the annual report remains a closed document. Online, it becomes part of your presence.

What content belongs in it

Part of the report is prescribed, the rest leaves room for design. The fixed elements include:

  • annual financial statements with balance sheet, income statement and notes
  • management report on the company’s development and objectives
  • information on corporate governance, for example on the board of directors and shareholders

Which of these parts are mandatory for you depends on legal form, size and listing. You clarify this with your auditors. Everything that provides context, on the other hand, is optional:

  • letter to investors, partners and shareholders
  • interview with the executive board
  • sustainability report
  • market and industry context
  • strategy and outlook
  • segment reporting

What the online version does better

Figures prove the development, words explain it. In print the two stand side by side; online they can be connected. A key figures block refers to the project behind it, and the investment in a photovoltaic system sits next to the chapter on sustainability. The report remains auditable and still becomes readable.

Then there is reach. A web page can be linked to, embedded in newsletters and social media and indexed by search engines. You decide which channels you use instead of depending on a brochure being sent out.

Interaction instead of a page-flip catalogue

The online version can do more than text and tables: charts that can be filtered, videos and interviews, key figures to download for further analysis. Accessibility is what matters: contrast, keyboard operation, screen reader support and clean semantics determine whether the report can be used by everyone. We use animations sparingly: they may support orientation, but must not get in the way of reading.

The framework for this is storytelling in the sober sense: background on the business activities, context for the development, an outlook on the coming year. This does not make the figures softer, but easier to understand.

How we create an online annual report

The process is the same in every project:

  1. Kick-off. Goals, core topics and rough structure. A first concept emerges from this.
  2. Content concept. Together we clarify how the report fits into your existing presence.
  3. Navigation, modules, design. A moodboard and prototype lead to the design concept, which you approve before anything is built.
  4. Build and content. We set up the platform while you enter the content in parallel; on request, we take care of the integration.
  5. Testing and staging. Until publication, everything sits in a password-protected environment.
  6. Go-live. The date is fixed early, and the site is finished one week before.

The report is built in our Stack CMS. Multilingualism, roles and approvals are built in, and the editorial team works directly in the platform on which the rest of your presence will later run too.

What we take care of

  • consulting and concept
  • design of the presence
  • entry and preparation of the content
  • dynamic presentation of the business figures
  • multilingualism
  • search engine optimisation and monitoring

Business figures are confidential until they are published. That is why development and operations are handled by us in Switzerland, and the platforms run on our own infrastructure in the Swiss VDC. Our information security management system is certified to ISO/IEC 27001 and covers development, hosting and operations.

Online annual reports have been part of our projects for more than ten years. Our case studies show what has come of them.

Written by Trevor Timmers COO / Senior Project Manager

Business 3 min read