Alamy website relaunch, CEO presentation [video]

We published our short report about Alamy’s relaunch of the website last week. The company has now released two video’s from the event. The first one focuses on the relaunch while the second one goes into a bit more detail on the charity work Alamy is engaging in. You can find the  original report on the event below the movies.

 

 

Stock photo agency Alamy  has put its money where its mouth is with the launch of their new website. After months of small changes and preparations, the Oxford(ish) based company has launched a redesigned website that caters to the advertising and design market while keeping some elementary priorities front of mind. The announcement was made at a press even in London’s Shoreditch house . A similar event in New York had to be cancelled as a result of the flight restrictions in the UK.

The first step may seem trivial to many but is, in fact a big leap for Alamy: Images on the homepage. Anyone having visited the company’s homepage will be familiar with its’ minimalist nature; a big search box and a few simple basic items. This page now contains a box with a small collection of images, still minimal compared to some sites, but a big change for a company that has shown buyers a simple white screen for a decade. Hardcore minimalists needn’t worry though, the images can be turned off with a single click and a familiar searchbox-only experience welcomes those that find the images simply too distracting….Alamy takes changes to its site very serious indeed.

And why is the company so precious about the site experience? Because it has put website loading speeds at the forefront of all decisions. Alamy CEO James West compared the loading speed of the new site with that of Getty Images and iStockphotoin a live setup. In the UK the site loaded four times faster than Getty Images and twice as fast as iStockphoto. In the US the site was even faster to load (0.9 seconds to be exact).

For its new website the company has redesigned the ‘advanced search’ model. Instead of a separate menu option that opens up, there is now a vertical bar on the left-hand side of the screen that opens and closes the numerous ways to refine a search. These options like age, ethnicity, location etc can be opened and closed with a single click. This sidebar is patent pending. Finally the company has added more creative images for the clients it is now looking to serve with its new website.

A final thing West addressed was something the company hasn’t talked about much, and that is the philanthropic philosophy of the company. He explained that 89% of the companies operating profit since 2006 have been donated to charitable causes. The company supports the Fischer Family Trust, a charity set up by Alamy’s co-founder Mike Fischer. It also provides most of the funding for the System Biology Laboratory that operates from the same building as Alamy.