How to write a product video script from your own website

The riskiest sentence in a video project is the one the agency wrote. It’s the sentence legal asks about, the one the founder doesn’t quite recognise, and the one that turns approving a video into a negotiation.

You can avoid writing that sentence at all. Every line in a product video can come from a page you’ve already published. This post is the method we use to do that, step by step, with a real example at the end.

The rule

Every word on screen comes from a page you’ve already put on the internet.

If you want a line you’ve never published, publish it first. Put it on the homepage, the pricing page or a launch post, and live with it there. That sounds like a strange constraint for a video. It’s actually the constraint that makes everything else easy.

Why published copy is the safest script

Your published copy has already been through the process a script is about to start.

It’s been approved. Whoever needs to sign off on claims has seen it, because it’s public. A line that’s already on your homepage doesn’t need a second legal review just because it’s moving.

It’s been tested. Your headline has been read by every visitor you’ve ever had. If it confused people, you’ve probably heard about it and changed it. A script written last week has been read by five people, all of whom work with you.

It matches. People who watch your video will read your page seconds later. When the words match, the video and the page reinforce each other. When they don’t, the visitor has to decide which one to believe. (Your website is already a product video makes the longer argument.)

It makes review fast. When every line has a source, approving the words means checking a list, which takes minutes. Most of the time spent on a video goes to waiting for approvals like this one. (Why a product video takes six weeks goes through where the rest goes.)

The method

1. Collect every candidate line

Open your homepage, your pricing page, your main product pages and your most recent launch post. Copy every sentence or phrase that could stand on its own: headlines, subheadings, feature names, stats, customer counts, the text on your buttons.

Don’t judge yet. A typical software homepage gives you thirty to sixty candidates.

2. Pick the promise

Your homepage headline is the promise. It usually opens the film, right after your logo, because it’s the one sentence your company has already agreed says what you do.

If your headline only works next to its subheading, take the pair. If it needs a paragraph of explanation, that’s worth knowing about your homepage too.

3. Pick three or four product lines

Each of these will sit over one shot of the product, so choose lines that point at something visible. Feature headings are usually right, because they were written to sit next to a screenshot. “The intelligent system that never sleeps” over a live workflow works. “Built for the modern team” over anything doesn’t, because there’s nothing to show.

A good test: for each line, can you name the exact piece of your interface it will sit on top of? If not, pick another line.

4. Pick one line of proof

A number, a customer count or a well-known customer. One is enough. The proof line comes near the end, after the viewer has seen what the product does, when a number means something.

5. End on your real call to action

Use the exact words on your main button. If your button says “Start for free”, the video says “Start for free”. The viewer will see the same words again on the page, and that’s the point.

6. Cut to length without rewriting

On screen, keep lines to about seven words, and the whole script to about forty. (How many words fit in a 30-second video shows where those numbers come from.)

If a line is too long, look for a shorter line that makes the same point somewhere else on your site. Feature pages often have a punchier version of a homepage paragraph. You can also trim a sentence down to a phrase that still appears on the page exactly as written. What you shouldn’t do is rephrase. The moment you rephrase, you’re writing a script again, and all the approvals start over.

7. Write the line sheet

The line sheet is a one-page table: every line that appears on screen, the page it came from, and the shot it sits over. Reviewing it takes about a minute, and at the end of that minute there’s nothing left to argue about.

Date the sheet. Homepages change, customer counts go up, and a line that was true in March might not be on the page in June.

A real example

Here’s the line sheet for our example film for Attio, which we made from their public homepage. Attio didn’t commission it, which makes it a clean test: we had nothing to work from except what they’d already published.

Every one of those six lines appears word for word on attio.com. [1] Nobody at Attio would need to approve a new sentence, because there isn’t one.

What this method will tell you about your homepage

Sometimes step 3 fails. You go through your homepage looking for three lines that point at something visible in the product, and you can’t find them. The headings are all abstract (“Work smarter”, “Built for teams”) and none of them name a thing a viewer could see.

Then the problem is upstream of the video. Your homepage isn’t showing the product either, and every visitor is having the same trouble you’re having. Fix the page first. The video will be better for it, and so will the page.

A product video is a surprisingly good test of a homepage. If you can’t find six lines on your own site that explain what you do, a script won’t save you, and a better homepage will.

Notes

1. Checked against the live attio.com homepage on September 26, 2026.