Shell : Inviting comparison

Dynamic archiving opens up online reporting.

The Site

Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company, has introduced a feature that allows direct checking of aspects of its annual reporting against the previous year’s.

Shell publishes its annual sustainability report in web (HTML) and PDF versions. The latest web edition, for 2008, includes a ‘Compare to 2007’ option in a set of ‘Page tools’ carried in the right-hand column. Clicking this on any page leads to the corresponding page in the year-earlier edition; the same tool in the 2007 report allows a further step back, to 2006.

The archived report page appears in a new browser window, but only after clicking to continue on an intermediate warning page which advises “You are about to leave this Report”. The archived page has a red warning triangle at the top with a reminder that this is an earlier edition and a link to the most recent version.

The Takeaway

Shell was a pioneer of sustainability reporting – it’s now on its twelfth annual report – and continues to set the standard for online features that make information more accessible and interrogable. The year-on-year comparison tool is a real innovation, adding a new dynamic to the archiving of reports (now pretty much a standing web feature) through its enablement of direct switching between data or text pages from successive years. It also encourages users, whether a time-stretched analyst or interested member of the public, to engage with the material and form their own judgement on Shell’s reported performance. As such it fits with previous initiatives such as the Tell Shell forum which have positioned the company as one looking for ways to open an informed dialogue with stakeholders.

On a practical level, the intermediate ‘handover’ page slows things down but, along with the hazard triangle, is a prudent precaution against people inadvertently reading – and possibly acting on – older reports as the latest.

First published on 12 May, 2009