Commercial photography site built for brief-ready enquiries
About project
Website Redesign · Website Design · Motion
CORDE is a commercial photography collective pitching brands, agencies, and producers for product, portrait, and lifestyle commissions. Art directors evaluate category fit, usage rights, turnaround, and team scale before sending a creative brief. Commercial buyers hire by shoot type first, then review case work, then check availability and licensing. When work lives on Instagram and scattered links with no shot-list-ready structure, strong photography does not convert to booked jobs even when the portfolio quality is there.
Challenges & approach
Problem
Commercial photography buyers follow a predictable hiring workflow: shoot category, relevant case proof, availability, then brief. Producers cannot tell what CORDE shoots, what usage is included, or who to brief when the site is a thumbnail grid without scope detail. Referral and social traffic arrives with intent but leaves because there is no clear hire path matched to how producers shortlist photographers during pitch preparation.
Solution
We built the site around the commercial hiring workflow with category entry for product, portrait, and lifestyle work. Project pages carry scope, deliverables, and outcome. Each discipline answers what producers evaluate, including turnaround, team size, and usage terms, with one brief or availability enquiry at the end of the path.
What we focused on
Hire-by-category architecture
Product, portrait, and lifestyle entry paths match how art directors search before viewing individual projects. Category pages carry representative work and scope signals so producers can shortlist in one session.
Scope-led project pages
Each case study explains deliverables, usage context, and outcome, as well as final frames. Producers evaluate photographers on relevance and production fit, not image quality alone when building a pitch shortlist.
Brief-ready enquiry flow
One structured brief or availability request replaces buried contact details. Fields capture shoot type, timeline, and usage so the collective responds with relevant work instead of a generic rate card.
Commercial buyer language
Copy uses producer terminology around usage, turnaround, and crew scale instead of consumer photography language that undermines B2B credibility with agency buyers evaluating vendor fit.
Referral-ready single URL
Work, services, and enquiry sit in one path instead of scattered social links. Sales and talent reps can send one URL that supports a pitch conversation without follow-up capability decks.
Process
We reviewed how inbound commercial leads arrived and rebuilt category structure, project pages, and contact flow around the hiring decision producers make in the first few minutes.
Discovery
We traced lead sources across referral, Instagram, and word of mouth and mapped where producers dropped off when they wanted to brief a job quickly. The old flow had strong work but no clear hire path.
Customer and competitor research
Commercial buyers search by shoot type first. We reviewed how leading photographers present category entry, project scope, and brief paths, then grouped CORDE work to match that shortlist behaviour.
Information architecture and messaging
Navigation follows producer evaluation order: category, project proof, team and usage detail, then brief. About and contact answer availability and licensing questions before a producer sends a job request.
UX design and conversion journey
Wireframes kept imagery dominant while making hire paths obvious. Each category page drives one primary brief action with fields matched to what producers include in a standard creative brief.
Search/local visibility foundations
Page titles and structure target commercial photography queries by discipline and use case. The site supports how agencies search when building vendor lists for upcoming campaigns.
Launch tracking optimisation
Enquiry routing was set up by shoot category and referral source. CORDE launched with one pitch-ready URL and tracking to see which disciplines drive brief requests.
What this approach is designed to improve
3
Hire-by-category paths
Product, portrait, and lifestyle routes match how commercial clients search for photographers before viewing projects.
1
Brief enquiry flow
Producers can request availability or send a job brief without hunting for contact details across social channels.
Proof
Led project pages
Selected work shows scope and outcome, what a producer evaluates beyond the image itself.
1
Pitch-ready URL
One link for referrals that carries work, services, and enquiry in a single commercial hiring path.
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