How to make a SaaS product video, step by step

Here is the whole process in one list. The rest of this post explains each step, and links to a longer essay where one exists.

1. Decide where the video will play.

2. Take the words from your website.

3. Pick one piece of product for each line.

4. Frame every shot so it reads on a phone.

5. Time it for sound off.

6. Open on the promise and end on your button.

7. Make it in three shapes.

8. Put it on the page properly.

9. Review a full cut on a phone, on mute.

This is the process for the short video that sits at the top of a homepage or in a launch post: 30 to 60 seconds, made for strangers. A two-minute walkthrough for someone who has already signed up is a different film with a different job, and most of these steps don’t apply to it. (Screen recording vs. product video explains the difference.)

1. Decide where it will play

Everything else depends on this. A video at the top of your homepage plays on mute, next to your headline, for visitors who arrived a few seconds ago and haven’t decided whether to stay. A video in a feed plays on mute between other people’s posts, so it has to say whose it is before it says anything else. A video in a sales email gets a click, and often the sound.

Most software companies need the first one before any of the others, because the homepage is where the most strangers see the product for the first time. So plan for it: a stranger, on mute, with the page around the video.

Plan the length now too. For a homepage, thirty to sixty seconds is the useful range. Much shorter and there’s no room to show the product. Much longer and most visitors have left before the end. (How long should a product video be? has the numbers behind that.)

2. Take the words from your website

Don’t write a script. You already have one.

Your homepage headline has had more drafts and more readers than anything an agency will write in two weeks. Your feature headings were written to sit next to a picture of the product. Your customer count has been approved by whoever approves claims. Your button text has been seen by every visitor you’ve ever had. (Your website is already a product video makes the full argument.)

So collect them. Copy the headline, every section heading, any number you publish about customers or usage, and the words on your main button. From that list, pick about six lines:

• the headline, which is your promise

• three or four headings that each point at something visible in the product

• one line of proof

• your button text

Keep every line word for word, and write down the page each one came from. That table is your line sheet, and it makes approval much faster. (How to write a product video script from your own website walks through it step by step.)

Aim for about forty words in total, and about seven per line. That’s roughly half of what anyone can read in thirty seconds, which leaves room to look at the product. (How many words fit in a 30-second video? shows the arithmetic.)

3. Pick one piece of product for each line

For each product line, find the one piece of your interface that proves it. Not the whole dashboard. One card, one chart, one row, one button.

The best picture is a change of state. A number goes up. A row appears. A button changes from Pay $89.00 to Pay $118.00 because someone ticked a box. A screen that changes is evidence that the product does what the line says. A screen that sits still is a screenshot, and people have seen a lot of screenshots.

If you can’t find anything in your product to put under one of your headings, that’s worth knowing. Either the heading is too abstract (“Built for modern teams”) or the thing it describes isn’t visible. Pick another heading, and consider fixing the page.

Here’s how that looks in practice, in six films we made from six software companies’ own websites:

The same shape shows up every time: a brief brand mark, the headline, three product shots, one line of proof, the button. (Stripe puts its proof first, because its homepage does.) (SaaS product video examples, taken apart goes through all six, line by line.)

4. Frame every shot so it reads on a phone

Your interface was designed to be used on a laptop at arm’s length. Your video will often be watched on a phone, in a frame a few inches wide. A full-screen recording of a dashboard at that size is a grey smear with a logo on it.

So crop hard. Show the one card, the one row or the one button that makes the point, large enough that its labels are readable in a second and a half. If you record your screen, record at the highest resolution you can and zoom in during the edit, so the crop stays sharp.

Keep the brand exact: your real fonts, your real colours, your real logo files. A viewer who has seen your site should recognise the video as yours before they read a word.

5. Time it for sound off

No major browser will autoplay a video with sound for a first-time visitor, so the first time most people see your homepage video, it’s silent. Feeds are mostly silent too. (Design your product video for sound off has the sources.)

That changes how you cut. Without a narrator, the edit has to carry the rhythm. Pick a steady beat and cut on it: each line arrives on a beat, each shot changes on a beat. Hold every line a little longer than it takes to read at a relaxed pace: about two seconds for three words, about five for eleven. Round up. Nobody complains about a line that stays a beat too long, but everyone notices one that disappears before they finish it.

If you want sound, add music for the places where people do turn it on, like YouTube and sales emails. Make sure the film works completely without it first.

6. Open on the promise and end on your button

The first three seconds matter more than any others, because in a feed many viewers never see the fourth. Spend one to three seconds on your brand mark so viewers know whose video it is, then put the headline on screen. Don’t spend five seconds on a logo animation. (The first three seconds of a product video looks at the data.)

End on your real call to action, in the words on your real button. If your button says “Start for free”, so does your closing shot, with your domain on screen too. The viewer will see the same words on your page a moment later, and that repetition is the point.

7. Make it in three shapes

The same film has to work at 16:9 on your homepage, 9:16 in stories and on phones, and 1:1 in feeds. A centre crop from 16:9 to 9:16 throws away about 68% of the frame, usually cutting both ends off every line of text. Each shape needs its own layout: the same lines, the same shots, recomposed for the new frame. (Why you can’t just crop a 16:9 video to 9:16 shows what a crop destroys.)

It’s far cheaper to plan for three shapes from the start than to rescue them at the end. Keep text away from the edges, and pick shots that still work when reframed.

8. Put it on the page properly

A heavy video can make a fast homepage slow. The fix is mostly in the file and the markup: a silent MP4 of a few megabytes, encoded for the web with the index at the front of the file, set to autoplay muted, looping and inline, with a poster image so something useful shows before the first frame arrives. (How to put a video on your homepage without slowing it down has the exact markup and settings.)

Choose the poster as carefully as any frame in the film. On a slow connection it’s the first thing your visitors see, and on some phones in low-power mode it may be the only thing they see. A frame with your headline and a glimpse of the product works as a poster. A black frame doesn’t.

9. Review a full cut on a phone, on mute

Whoever makes the film, the first complete cut is the moment to check it against the line sheet. Every word should match a page you’ve published. Every shot should be readable at the width of a phone. It should make sense with the sound off, and end on your button. Watch it the way most people will: on a phone, muted, once, without pausing.

That review should take minutes, because the words were approved when you published them. If it takes longer, something in the film was invented, and that’s the part to cut.

How long it should take

If you start from a brief, a studio will usually quote five to twelve weeks for a one-minute animated explainer, and most of that time goes to writing a script, designing a look and waiting for approvals. (Why a product video takes six weeks goes through a real studio plan.)

If you start from your website, most of that work is already done. The words are written and approved, the product is built, and the brand exists. What’s left is choosing, framing and timing, which is real work but not six weeks of it. We deliver ours within 24 hours.

The checklist

• One job, one audience, one place it will play

• About six lines, about forty words, all copied from your site, each with its source

• One piece of product under each product line, showing something change

• Every shot readable at the width of a phone

• Works on mute, cut on a steady beat, every line held a little longer than it takes to read

• Brand for one to three seconds, then the headline, by about five seconds

• Ends on your real button text and your domain

• Three layouts: 16:9, 9:16 and 1:1

• A silent, compressed MP4 with a poster frame worth looking at

• One full review on a phone, muted, against the line sheet