Presentation

The Corbis website can be found at the following link : http://www.corbis.com, which automatically redirects us to http://pro.corbis.com, the main page of the commercial website of this company. Corbis was founded by Bill Gates in 1989; its headquarters are located in Seattle, with offices in London, Los Angeles, New York, Germany, Hong Kong and Japan. Corbis is a leading provider of image-licensing solutions and services to creative professionals and companies dealing in image-based consumer products. As part of its website, Corbis provides visual content and services to people around the world through innovative digital technologies. The Corbis Collection is currently 70 million images strong, with more than 3.1 million available online. It owns or represents the world’s most significant photography and art from more than 1,500 creative sources, and also acquired three highly reputed stock photography businesses (Digital Stock Corporation, Westlight Corporation and Outline Press) in order to support the ongoing expansion of its collection. On its website, Corbis provides images for both limited and one-time only use. All Royalty-Free images are available digitally for direct purchase and download, whereas the rights managed images are provided in both digital and non-digital format to meet almost any publishing need, such as advertising, graphic design, pre-press, multimedia and print. Corbis also provides rights managed images for a variety of image-based consumer products such as greeting cards, calendars, gifts, wall décor, and more. In addition, Corbis Motion offers the richest, most diverse selection of moving images, including contemporary and archival imagery from market-leading collections.

As a consequence, it is easy to understand that the website www.corbis.com is a major element for the company because it is the only way for it to show its products, to become widely known and to extend the scope of its activities and customers. For this reason, we found it very interesting to make an audit of the website of such a leading company : first we are going to make a presentation of the form and contents of the Corbis website, and then we will analyze it in a critical way, in order to suggest any improvement in its quality or functionality.

1- Corbis.com, a huge website used by thousands of professionals: a complete inventory

· The 3 main parts and the general organization

The website is composed of three main pages untitled “Search Creative”, “Search Current Events” and “Search All”. Even if they are quite similar in their organization and use, they differ in their contents, because each of them aims at a particular target.

“Search Creative” is composed of several tags. The first one is called Shop and enables to look for a particular category of pictures classified alphabetically, as well as Royalty-Free CDs. These products are CDs released every month, that offer unlimited use of Royalty-Free images; the main characteristic of this type of goods is that they are features, i.e. a pre-selected set of images on one theme. For example, we randomly chose a topic about babies and one of the results that appeared was a CD called “Addition to the Family”, composed of 45 pictures and costing $599.00. Most of the CDs contain between 30 and 50 images and cost several hundred dollars because after purchase their contents can be used in a variety of ways including advertising, brochures, packaging, websites, multimedia projects… There are very few restrictions placed on how to use these images, moreover the Royalty-Free license allows the customer to alter an image and create unique works of his own. Another tag says Outline, and brings together different elements, such as galleries, top stories, focus on a photographer or features, but always with a common topic: celebrities and stars. Indeed, Outline Press was the name of the world’s leading provider of celebrity portraiture acquired by Corbis in 1998. The other links contained on the “Search Creative” webpage are links to the main categories of services offered by Corbis –a topic that we will deal with in the next part.

“Search Current Events”, the second main page, is organized the same way as the first one: some tags provide access to a particular section. Whereas “Search Creative” is a part providing illustrations for any type of support in any field, this part is more helpful for journalists, i.e. an editorial use. The page “Search Current Events” is composed of a big tag presenting the top stories of the moment: war and peace in Iraq, attacks in Jordan and riots in France for November. Three smaller tags title News, Entertainment and Sports. When clicking on each of these sections, we access some other pages where we have the possibility of buying one picture alone or of getting features, like on the topic of the Winter Olympics in Torino.

Finally, the third main part “Search All” shows the same type of presentation with a main tag linking to one of Corbis’ commercial services, and several smaller tags which are exactly the same links as in the “Search Creative” part. The only original link on this section is the one called Hotline, “Find the best of Corbis… ahead of time” which is a kind of up-to-date image section with a month’s issue, some current features, key events, and a calendar mentioning the most important upcoming events.

· Commercial service links in on the Corbis website

The three main pages that we just developed all share a common part composed of links and tags presenting the commercial services of the company: “Image Licensing”, “Assignment and Representation”, “Rights Services”, and “Digital Asset Management”. We can also directly use a browser enabling to search some pictures according to a few criteria that we can tick at the top of the page.

The “Image Licensing” link is used to get a general survey of the collection of 70 million images proposed by Corbis. It is divided into several branches according to the type of picture and its use: Commercial, Art, Historical, Editorial and Current Events. In each case, we can get to a gallery, and also a catalog of the newest pictures released every day. Also, it is interesting to note that there is a special link to a motion page where one can buy a footage on any subject.

The “Assignment and Representation” section enables a potential customer to be helped in order to find the picture that suits him best, because it is classified by photographer or genre, as every single photographer has his unique style. Here we can view portfolios of these photographers, as well as contact Corbis or send a request form.

The “Rights Services” section was created to help the members learn how to use images of famous people, places and other protected intellectual property. It is divided into two services: Rights Representation, which is a gallery of world-famous celebrities and personalities represented by Corbis, and Rights Clearances, which enables the customer to get an authorization of use from the rights holders thanks to the help of Corbis.

Finally, the “Digital Asset Management” section is a service that centralizes creative assets in one secure environment in order to access, share, modify and distribute them quickly and efficiently.

Apart from these four sections, we can also find on each main page of the website a browser with some basic search options with boxes that we can tick: Rights Managed, Royalty-Free, Only Model-Released and Zefa alone (a subsidiary of the Corbis group). It is also possible to ask for search tips and to turn on more search options in order to make the search more precise, for example image attributes, orientation, category, collection, date of availability, location etc… Next to this browser section, we can find some more links titling “My Lightboxes”, “My Orders”, “My Profile”, “Login”, “Contact Us”, “Help” and “Cart”, all for a commercial use. They all lead to a login page where the user needs to register and can find information to do so, except for “Contact Us” which is a ready-to-post questionnaire and “Help” which is a link to a table of contents, FAQs and glossary section.

2- Design and functionality, quality and diversity : positive and negative aspects

· Design and aesthetic aspects of the website

As Corbis is amongst the leaders in the imagery world, it is both logical and necessary that the company develop a strong communication policy and include in its website some samples of its products, thus showing the necessity of the presence of images in information and communication, and making this commercial tool more attractive and aesthetic.

In this sense, the fact that art and commercial images as well as editorial pictures of current events are everywhere on the pages of the website constitutes a very positive point. The organization of the main pages is quite homogeneous because it mixes small paragraphs of text in grey, black and light colors with pictures, tags and illustrations of different sizes spread over a page with a white background. Moreover, many different fonts are used, which provide an original and far from monotonous tone to the documents.

Overall, most of the pages –except for the pages devoted to registering- are beautifully composed with pictures taken by famous great photographers, and which are usually for sale. Some of the main pages also show some media animations because Corbis sells photographs and motion footage too. For example, in the CorbisMotion section (part of Image Licensing on the main pages), it is possible for anyone to view hundreds of clips classified by topic using QuickTime, and it works very well. We can also watch some quick animated stories like the one on the theme ‘Lust’, which has been released in November. It shows a series of pictures related to the topic from different points of view, with moving images and animations, thus showing the relevance of features: posting some pictures together because they are related in a certain way. Thus, it certainly encourages users of the Corbis site to buy more than one photograph at a time and to visit the special features composed by the company.

To conclude on this part, we could say that the general design and aesthetics of this website fits in well with its function of providing professionals with photographs, motions, illustrations and fine arts images ; and providing a young, dynamic and overall positive image of the company. Finally, it is also of great use in highlighting the quality of the contents of Corbis’ site.

· The value of the contents

The raison d’être of such a website is, of course, to find new customers to buy pictures. Thus, beyond the diversity of pages and the aesthetic aspect, the major element remains the ability to choose a product and to easily buy it online: this is the reason why we thought it was very important to analyze this aspect here.

The negative point is that in spite of the apparent playful aspect of this website with lots of images, the vocabulary which is used is very technical. For someone who is not a professional of the photography market and who is just visiting Corbis in order to find some pictures for his personal website or any other type of work, the vocabulary and even the whole process of getting images is not clear at all. For example, we could wonder what a “lightbox” means (translated in French by “visionneuse”!), although it seems to be a major link as it is on every single page. It does not seem to be the same thing as the “cart” where we can stock the items we want to buy (as on any commercial website) because there is a cart link right next to the lightbox. After searching everywhere, we can find some explanation in the Help section : apparently, a lightbox is a personal online workspace for working with images. However, one must be a registered Corbis member to access this feature. Collaboration with other Corbis members is available through Sharing, which allows designated users to view, comment, and work on lightboxes and their contents. Overall, it looks like an interesting feature, but the site visitor must be used to this type of system to make the most of it.

Moreover, we can regret that the access to most of the interesting pages is subject to membership. When someone finds an image in one of the sections and wants to have more information about it before buying it, it is still necessary to register and become a Corbis member. In this connection, we found an article on the web at http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/2472, untitled “My Corbis Nightmare”, which was posted by a Corbis user and explains how complex it is to obtain a picture or even its price from this website! Once again, Corbis seems to have been created for professionals whereas anyone should be able to take the advantage of such a rich and fabulous collection of photographs.

On a more positive aspect, it is important to say that, obviously, Corbis remains among the best websites for the quality and quantity of its contents, i.e. its pictures. As the organization and links to the different pages are quite similar, we might think that the contents would be weak in diversity. However, this is far from being the case: the database stocks millions of very well classified photographs. Thus, it makes the search for pictures on a particular theme easy, as anyone can try to enter a word in the browser. Immediately, hundreds of art images will appear, ready to be chosen.

Finally, another good thing about the Corbis website is that it contains some brilliant ideas –unfortunately not always brought out. For example, after clicking on several links (“Search All”, then “Hotline”, then “Calendar”) we can find what they call a Hotline Calendar. This function features this year’s most important upcoming events three months in advance, relating them to history or current events. Clicking on December, there is a special topic for almost every single day of the month: arrest of Rosa Parks 50 years ago on the 1^st, 25^th anniversary of John Lennon’s death on the 8^th, Nobel Prize Awards on the 10^th, Howard Hughes 100^th birthday on the 24^th etc… After choosing a specific event, an image set of the whole story appears on a contact sheet, so that it is easy to see them quickly and to choose the interesting ones. According to us, the idea of the Hotline Calendar is very helpful for journalists, and a direct link should be placed on the main page of the website. Another example of the good and original things that can be found on Corbis is their presentation of photographers. As these people remain the protagonists of the photography world –even stock photography- it is normal that their works are not sold anonymously. Thus, organizing a part showing their art and telling a few lines about them is one of the best ideas that can be found on this website.

Conclusion

In the light of this analysis, Corbis’ website is overall a very complete website, large, rich, diverse, aesthetic and dynamic. However, we may regret a few aspects, particularly some technical points. Indeed, using Corbis’ services online does not seem to be as easy as it should be for a customer, and we can regret that this point does a downgrades the reputation of the leading stock photography company in the world.