Veer has relaunched its Web site, billing the new treatment as uncomplicated. The site currently offers more than 1.5 million images, 12,000 fonts and merchandise targeting the creative community.
Veer’s evolution is exemplary of the industry’s race to the middle. In January, its parent company Corbis moved all Veer rights-managed imagery to corbisimages.com, segmenting its premium offering from royalty-free. While Veer still carries traditionally priced stills, it is certainly catering to the no-hassle customer segment with simplified licensing and prices that span the gamut—starting at $1.
Beginning with last year’s launch of Veer Marketplace, which took in its failed Corbis predecessor SnapVillage, Veer has been adopting many features first introduced by microstock sites. It introduced credits-based pricing, launched a customer protection plan providing indemnity coverage, offered cash for image submissions, and developed a Microsoft Office plug-in.
The Web site redesign offers more of the same ease and simplicity that appeals to the new middle-market and low-budget buyer segments. The Marketplace and the site are now one in the same. The home page is a big search box. Results are sortable by price, file size, attributes and people characteristics such as number, age and ethnicity. Basic and extended licenses are available.
Instead of Veer’s previous positioning as a hip, designed, unique and high-end resource for creatives, the new message targets a very different market segment: “Veer’s creative elements are priced so affordably that nearly anyone can add style to business, marketing and personal design projects ranging from websites and blog posts to business presentations and ad campaigns.”
Veer has attempted to retain some of its previous sophistication. It has built its community in the pre-microstock days and is hoping to retain it alongside font and merchandise offerings, as well as continued publication of design news and community blog—The Skinny and The Fat. It will be interesting to see if Veer’s previous popularity can make the difference to succeeding in a space where practically all newcomers have failed to compete against the established players.