ABSA’s online annual report includes our new easy-to-use “My Report” tool that enables your users to create their own mini version of the report, archiving the users favourite pages in a simple menu driven environment – essentially creating a mini-report on the fly.

As reports get increasingly complex, this tool shows the user that the issuer is making every effort to put the primary information the individual user requires, at their fingertips.

With My Report users of can select, extract and compile pages with specific relevance to their needs.

Provided the user does not delete the cookie the selection of pages is saved online for future reference.

 • The “Add Page to My Report” link will automatically add the selected page to the “View My Report” webpage.

• Click on the “View My Report” to see your selected pages

In the recent international IR Global Rankings Telkom’s online annual report (NYSE & JSE) was elected the best online annual report overall and best in global sector.

In addition Telkom’s IR site, which Investoreports consulted on in terms of structure and usability, was deemed to be one of the best in terms of technical criteria.

The 2008 Investor Relations Global Rankings in Asia, Pacific & Africa awards were ajudicated by MZ Consult NY LLC ( http://www.mz-ir.com ) jointly with IR Global Rankings' supporting entities (KPMG, NYSE Euronext, Arnold & Porter, Bank of New York Mellon, Demarest & Almeida, PR Newswire). The 10th annual IR Global Rankings ceremony was held at The Intercontinental the Grand New Delhi, in India, after a comprehensive technical review of 160 registrants from 32 countries.

Take a look at LSE listed Anglo Platinum's reports - simple, usable and appealing!

12 month figures on a NYSE /JSE listed client shows that 120 000 HTML pages of their 2007 online annual report were served to thousands of visitors from 7 continents.

Among the headline users were the useful suspects – the investment bankers, the data collectors like Thompsons.

But these only accounted for perhaps 10% of the total traffic - the balance went to employees, prospective employees, current and prospective customers, suppliers and competitors.

At the same time only 550 copies of the report were downloaded in PDF.

So there is a common dogma that needs to be re-considered: “We don’t want to spend money on an HTML annual report because we don’t get many downloads of our PDF.” That’s like saying you won’t buy a bicycle because your horse is too slow… Once your report in an accessible format it becomes, well, … accessible – and each page served is literally costing only a few cents.

And for those of you who are producing great online annual reports - take a look at your stats. I expect you will find the same scenario - the identifiable domains of your investing community will only account for a small percentage of traffic - which means your annual report is an important source of information for your total communications audience – which takes us back to the orginal premise - perhaps you should be approaching your marketing team for funding!