new branding and optimizing growth for emerging tools

In 2022, Shutterstock expanded their stock content offering to include easy-to-use AI-driven design tools.

For our Creative Flow™ go-to-market strategy, we wanted to align visuals and messaging to inspire our users in a cohesive, modern way. We used it as a vehicle to up-level the brand as a whole.

Creative Direction for this launch was critical. I lead workshops with the brand, marketing, product marketing, and UX teams to drive our new direction and create consistency.

My team and I established the overall branding to up-level our marketing and in-product experiences within one week, then updated our design system while creating multiple assets.

We focused on growth opportunities in key areas of the site, like the home page and SEO-optimized landing pages. I also directed UI design and gave input on user experience.

As final approver, I was able to ensure our overall output was both aligned and successful.

Key results

Directed redesign of key landing pages, including the home page, leading to a projected 1M+ yearly bookings, +18% lead order rate, +10% paid order rate, +70% click-through rate, and +14% signup rate.

Directed design, creation, and copywriting for 100s of new landing pages, leading to ~60% growth in traffic, increased click-through rate to ~40%, and +600k increase in product usage.

Provided UX design direction and growth marketing strategy for AI design product launches, leading to 2.5M visitors in 4 months post launch, +250K yearly bookings, +10% increase in asset licensing.

Our approach

Shutterstock is historically a stock content site, and breaking into the SaaS space felt dated and less competitive as the team took a more traditional approach.

For this launch, we wanted to provide a fresh look, feel and messaging. We updated our brand identity to better represent our tools and modern sensibility in order to make our customers feel creative, confident, and empowered.

We expanded our color palette, built a new design system, and gave our copy more personality. We also simplified the way we depicted our tools in order to work with our global efforts.

We literally broke out of the box with our updated layouts.