BRANDING

Product Imagery

Good SaaS product imagery converts.
When we revamped our brand and product imagery for a crisp enterprise appeal, we drove a 60%+ lift in homepage trials by shifting from abstract to clear, product-led visuals.

The Problem

For years, marketing teams at Hootsuite struggled with product imagery.

Design requests regularly came in with instructions like “please include screenshots of the product” — but with little additional clarity. Designers were left to spin up trial accounts, recreate setups without real data, and guess at what would be most effective. The result was inconsistent imagery, slow turnaround times, and visuals that often failed to clearly communicate product value. It was a recurring pain point across social posts, landing pages, sales collateral, and video.

Leadership and Direction

When I stepped into the role of team manager, one of my first priorities was to fix this systemically — not just for the design team, but for the entire marketing organization. The goal was simple but ambitious: make product imagery clear, flexible, scalable, and performance-driven.

We aligned around a new visual style to product imagery and partnered closely with the paid media team to test the work where it mattered most: the homepage, landing pages, and ads.

We aligned around an updated visual style and partnered closely with the paid media team to test the work where it mattered most: the homepage, landing pages, and ads.

The Framework

1

Use working figma files

Use working figma files

All imagery built from product designer Figma files, made into editable vector layers and combined with aspirational brand creative to bring it to life.

2

Tell a micro-story

Must depict a clear, recognizable workflow at a glance. These small, narrative moments made the product instantly clear and understandable.

3

Flexible realism scale

We used 100% product-accurate imagery for education, sales, and trust, down to 50% abstraction for lighter, more conceptual marketing moments.

Results & Impact

The impact was immediate and measurable.

Homepage engagement increased, doubling trials
Paid media design time dropped by hours per project
The team unlocked the ability to deliver far greater volume, velocity, and variety of creative

With this foundation in place, we went on to build a paid media creative engine, running ads on an iterative testing cadence and scaling output through a hybrid of internal designers and agency partners.

What began as a fix for a long-standing design headache became a foundational system for how Hootsuite showed its product to the world.

It elevated the quality of marketing output, empowered the design team, and aligned product, brand, and performance and supported the company’s evolution toward the enterprise market.

1. Source UI directly from product design figma files.

All imagery would be built from product designers’ Figma files, reconstructed as clean, editable vector layers — not screenshots. We used fictional but realistic brands as content, allowing quick adaptation across industries and verticals.

2. Every product image tells a micro-story

Each visual needed to communicate a clear, recognizable workflow at a glance. These small, narrative moments made the product instantly understandable and tightly aligned the imagery with marketing copy.

3. A flexible realism scale

Not every use case required full UI fidelity. 100% product-accurate imagery for education, sales, and trust, down to ~50% abstraction for lighter, more conceptual marketing moments.