User interface

Online reporting should provide an ideal alternative: it allows links to other content on other pages and the ability to click on any aspect and get more detail without leaving the current page. Yet few online documents take full advantage of this fact. Typically, they rely solely on hyperlinks that take the user to another page without any clear indication of where the relevant information is positioned on the page. In effect, they mimic the deficiencies of a printed book, with the added disadvantage that you can’t use your fingers and thumb as impromptu bookmarks.

What investors want:

• To access other areas of the document without leaving the current page.
• To view relevant financial information while reading the narrative.

What we’ve done to make it work:

• Introduced an easy-to-use dual screen format, so that supplementary information (extracted or summarised from other parts of the report) can be displayed alongside the text you’re reading.
• Given links in the narrative text to relevant summary financial information that can be displayed alongside.
• Provided access to a glossary from every page.
• Provided a search facility on every page.
• Allowed ‘wide’ or ‘narrow’ view options, so that the dual format adapts to changes in screen size.

See this in action