Annual reports have always been an important asset for organizations, informing stakeholders of progress made during the year. 

The issue, however, is how quickly the target audience skims those reports, barely glancing at them.

GIF Source: Giphy

It’s like all your hard work going down the drain.

So, how do you stop that from happening and keep stakeholders glued to the report from start to finish?

Make them interactive!

Replace the static blocks of text and numbers with an engaging alternative — interactive annual reports. 

Let’s look at what that means, with some examples.

What are interactive annual reports? 

Annual reports are business documents that give stakeholders and potential investors a peek into a company’s operational or financial performance within the last year. 

Now, imagine adding interactive elements such as animations, checkboxes, audio, or interactive videos — suddenly, you’re not just reading boring data but engaging with it. 

That’s an interactive report! This version encourages participation from readers, motivating them to interact with the document by clicking on an element to reveal data or answering a short quiz. 

Simply put, interactive annual reports: 

• Captures and holds people’s attention, making your brand more relatable. 
• Helps you tell a visual story that draws stakeholders in and prompts them to explore the content further.

With that cleared up, below are examples of interactive annual reports that won’t just inspire your creativity but highlight ways to transform data into engaging experiences. 

10 engaging interactive annual report examples

Wondering what an engaging annual report would look like?

We’ve curated ten examples you can check out below.

1. BetterCloud: State of SaaSOps

BetterCloud is a SaaS company centered on brand management and security. In this 2023 report, they share trends and insights into managing SaaS brands at scale. 

Their design combines animated graphic design, interactive bar charts you hover on to view numbers, and bold text to give users an engaging digital experience. 

You’ll also notice that the report is designed on flashcards with a downward arrow directing readers where to go next. That transformed the report into a visually engaging and informative story. 

Check it out for yourself and experience how engaging it is. 

2. Ceros: The Color Report

This next example is a report by yours truly about color predictions and trends. 

It begins with a GIF showing different colors, accompanied by a short text about how ‘colors of the year’ started and has become a thing. 

But the main highlight here is the section listing the colors of the year between 2018 and 2019. 

Instead of just listing them with an image and short description, we made it more engaging by allowing readers to change the report’s color scheme when they click on any color of the year. 

So it doesn’t just tell people how colors influence their campaigns, they experience it.  

3. Spencer Stuart: Mapping the future of media leaders

Writing reports to help people make decisions can be tricky. You have tons of information to share but don’t want people to feel overwhelmed. 

See how Spencer Stuart simplifies their report:

They use engaging visuals throughout the document and show/hide interactions. Here, readers click on or hover over elements to view more information 

With this, the report appears simple and attractive yet it’s filled with helpful info.

4. Tenable: Insights to guide your IT/OT cybersecurity strategy

Tenable, a leading cybersecurity agency, designed this report to provide brands with tips on responding to cyber threats. 

The journey kicks off with a five-question quiz that reveals how your brand stacks up against others in dealing with threats. 

This does an excellent job of setting the stage; you have expectations as you dive into the report. 

Overall, Tenables uses a mix of quizzes, animations, and bold text to call people’s attention to important points. 

5. Pendo: State of product leadership report

This annual report by product-analytics software Pendo, focuses on communicating what’s new with software product leaders.

As you scroll through this piece, three main interactive features stand out.

• An animated bar graph that comes alive with data when you hover over it.  
• Clickable text that displays additional information as you click on it. 
• A phenomenal pie chart that pops up with data when you hover.

Together, they simplify complex data, allowing readers to consume information through active participation.  

6. GumGum: Viral images

GumGum delivers its ‘What makes an image go viral’ report by taking readers on a journey through time. 

You’re welcomed by an image of an astronaut on the moon, a timeline, and a call to action telling you to begin the journey. 

You can click the CTA or any of the years to go through the viral images and click the images to see how they went viral. 

This report’s appealing approach offers an engaging user experience that keeps you glued, clicking through till you’re done reading. 

7. Crowdstrike: Stop breaches

Perhaps stakeholders aren’t reading your online reports because of jumbled text. 

Maybe it’s time to try a different approach like Crowdstrike in this report. 

It opens with an image of a sphere with beeping hotspots. As you scroll through, you find captivating copy that sorta intrigues you.  

It goes like this… 

Understand what caused the most disruption and what will impact your security posture in 2016. 

Was it related to 

Espionage?

Financial gain?

Hacktivism?

Reading something like this just catches your attention, encouraging you to explore other goodies the content might have.

That plus engaging visuals can deliver an engaging reading experience to your audience.

8. Criteo: Smart marketer’s guide to omnichannel

Criteo’s report introduces B2B marketers to connecting users with what they need and want, by using multiple interactive features. 

It starts with numbers in the header that allow you to jump to different sections of the document. 

As you scroll through, assets show hidden information when you click or hover over them. 

While this report is text-heavy, it doesn’t come off that way. It balances the text with interactive elements, colorful icons, and white space to create an informative but immersive experience.

9. Genpact AI: 5 ways to make your business AI-ready

If your report has a title like Genpact AI’s, you want to go straight to the point like the AI/machine learning brand. 

It opens with stats affirming brands are open to implementing AI. 

But the interactive magic happens when Genpact shares its report findings. 

Each finding lets you choose which stat you see, a leader or a laggard. It’s like a quiz with instant results showing the percentage of people who’ve embraced the findings. 

So, you’re reading the report and interacting with it simultaneously, keeping you glued to the content till you’re done. 

10. Adecco: Workforce planning

In this operational report, Adecco ushers you into a piece full of color, visual animations, and interactive elements. 

When you enter the page, you’re welcomed with office pins being tacked to the header. 

As you scroll through, you’ll find motion graphics and different assets waiting for you to click or hover over them to spill information. 

Now, there are other report templates you can look at for inspiration. 

But, let’s take a quick pause to explain why you should even care about making your digital publication reports interactive.

What are the benefits of digital annual reports?

During several discussions with clients, John Schwartz, CEO of Soapbox, a creative communication agency, noted that annual reports aren’t quite effective for his client’s audience. 

Throughout the conversation, it was clear that people prefer to learn about his brand in other ways. And that’s because the static PDF reports “can seem like a relic from the past.”

However, that’s not the case with interactive annual reports. 

This version helps you:

• Engage stakeholders. It presents them with a more appealing report that encourages them to explore the content. They’ll want to see what comes next at each turn. 
• Simplify complex information. Interactive reports let you break down information in a format stakeholders can understand. This allows them to comprehend data and keep track of your brand’s performance. 
• Stand out from competitors. You’ll be giving the audience a unique experience that your rivals haven’t caught up with yet. 
• Increase brand reach. Interactive annual reports are typically hosted online so they’re easily accessible. And because they’re engaging, they can easily be shared with others, spreading your brand identity abroad. 
• Track user behavior. You can monitor how users interact with the report, tracking the most viewed section or places where they spend the most time. This way, you can better understand your audience. 

Overall, creating interactive reports lets you give stakeholders an engaging user experience. 

Next, let’s show you how to create that experience.

How do you design an interactive annual report?

Follow these steps to start creating interactive reports:

• Define your goals: Decide what you hope to achieve with an interactive report as that will determine the type of assets to add to the content. Do you want to highlight the organization’s performance or a new product?
• Collect and organize your data: If you’re going to add data to the report, get it ready and ensure you have all relevant information before designing the report.
• Develop your design concept: Create a mockup of how the report should look on a platform like Studio, our creative design tool. Share with your team using Markup, a collaboration platform to get their feedback. The point is to ensure the design is appealing and aligns with your brand style and typography. 
• Include interactive content: If everyone is on board with the design concept, proceed to improve its look and add interactive elements to it. You can add interactive graphs, audio, animations, and clickable images or icons using Editor, a tool for creating interactive content.
• Preview your content: View how the report will appear on the audience’s devices before publishing it. If you use our preview feature, you get to see and test the experience in-app. This way, you can optimize the content where needed and embed or publish it.  
• Track and measure: After the content goes live, you want to track users’ engagement using Ceros analytics to know if it’s meeting your goals. You get to see the sections they interact with most and how much time they spend consuming the content. 
• Promote your report: Let your audience know you’ve got something interesting for them by sharing an announcement on social media with a snippet, sending out an email newsletter, or promoting the report on your website. Another thing you can do is add relevant keywords to the report so it’s optimized for search engines. 

So, that brings us to the end of this guide.

Over to you!

You’re pumped and ready to dive into designing these interactive reports.

But it feels like you’ll need some assistance to begin.

That’s not a problem at all. 

Just schedule a demo with Ceros and you’ll have someone waiting for you on the other side.