Make an awesome software demo video
"Everything Starts Out Looking Like a Toy" #77
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Hi, I’m Greg 👋! I publish this newsletter on finding data products and interesting data observations with the goal of finding patterns and future product insights. (Also, it’s fun.) If you need a background on how we got here, check out What is Data Operations?
This week’s toy: a design to transform the part of our phones that we don’t use that often but that shows frequently: the lock screen. Edition #77 of this newsletter is here - it’s January 17, 2022.
The Big Idea
A short long-form essay about data things
⚙️ Getting to an awesome software demo video
Building a demo video for a software product is a daunting task. You need to catch the viewer’s attention, share a relevant insight (or two) about the benefit your product delivers for them, and make it engaging. All in about 60 to 90 seconds. If you’ve done your job well, the viewer will decide to try your product or reach out to learn more from a seller.
So how do you know you’re done? Following the “80/20” or Pareto Principle, there are a few things to do to make building your software demo video more successful.
At the end of the process, you will have ensured that you have:
Decided what to show the viewer
Written a script to determine what to say
Sequenced what will happen on the screen while you are talking
Thought about what needs to be true for your voiceover and screen process to be true
Tried it yourself
Redone it enough times for it to seem believable
Edited the results to remove the human mistakes and empty filler that happens when we demo
Deciding what to show
Think about the last commercial you just saw. Do you have any idea what brand it was for? If the commercial was effective, you left with a brand name, a product, and a benefit that you want to learn more about. Run faster with these shoes! Buy this tasty pizza! Avoid having a meeting by writing updates in Slack! Yes, that last one was a real commercial I saw while watching playoff football.
Product videos are more like commercials, YouTube or TikTok videos, or quick value propositions than ever before, so you need to select the idea that makes it easiest to share your elevator pitch in 60-90 seconds. For a B2B software product, this will sound familiar to product managers:
As a {{person who uses this software}}, you have {{explain burning problem}}. With {{your product}}, you can {{achieve benefit}} in {{time period}}. In the next 60 seconds, we’ll show you one way to get started.
By building a use case for the video itself, you’ve created the frame for not wasting the viewer’s time. A demo video is a promise that the viewer will learn something valuable in a minute. If it doesn’t do that, it’s not a good video (see Pareto picture above: we should be focusing on the 20% of the use cases that provide most of the value, not edge cases).
Writing a script
Now that you have a few candidates for video topics, try writing the first few lines of the script. If it’s complicated to explain, try again. This might be the hardest part of writing a script for a product demo. You need to get to the point right away, so if it doesn’t come naturally, take another run at the same content.
Once you land on a use case you are able to explain in about 15-20 seconds, think about how you would resolve the use case, and provide value. If it’s a feature in your product, what’s the one that really makes people say “a-ha!” and want to learn more. If there is no one feature, zoom out mentally and think about the one benefit your product offers.
This is Hollywood, so you don’t have to show every detail to the prospect. You’re trying to get them to learn a bit more about the problem you’re trying to solve, not complete a Stack Overflow tutorial on the function.
Part of the script should focus on exactly what you do on the screen. Understanding the steps someone needs to take is part of this demo (and you are also teaching future SDRs and sellers how to do this).
Once you get an idea of what you want to say and what to do, record yourself doing the action in the product and build a rough cut of the actions that need to happen. You might find that there is some setup work required – keep notes as this process also gives you a demo for your sales team – and think about the shorthand or pauses where you might jump to the next step in the process.
Sequencing the screen to the words
Now, try reading your script over the video you just made. You’ll probably notice some awkward pauses where there is not enough happening on the screen, or the words don’t quite match the action on the screen.
To resolve this conflict, think about the “beats” of the story where you emphasize the problem or product, how you are going to solve it, and the steps to go through the process. It will then be clearer how to remove empty spaces, time on the screen that is essentially just mouse movements, and any time that you are waiting for something to happen in the product. The perfect version of this looks like a seamless transfer from one idea to another while a voiceover sells the idea.
Does this even make sense?
One way of testing if any of this is relevant is to set up a scenario where you can follow along at home. This means building steps that you can mimic while watching the video. If following the steps leaves you thinking the presentation is disjointed, you might have forgotten some connective tissue (how do I learn the concepts for these ideas) or made assumptions about the knowledge level of the prospect (there are some things to learn before I watch this video).
At the end of the process, you’ll have a product demo video that in about 1-2 minutes tells a story that entices a viewer to learn more. You won’t get the whole story from the video, but it should build jumping off points where the prospect can learn more by talking to the sales team or watching subsequent content. When in doubt, remove words and shorten your video. You’d rather get repeat views of slightly sped up content than ask people to sit through a ten-minute presentation and not remember why they got there.
What does a great feature video look like?
Here’s an example from Gusto detailing how to run a payroll cycle. This is a 2 minute video on running a pretty complex feature, yet it feels like a friendly support rep who knows about your business. You’re motivated to complete the task because hey, people like to get paid!
In the video, the Gusto team introduces a concept, shows you exactly how to do it (in the software) and speeds things up so you feel like you did it right the first time. Great job!
What’s the takeaway? Building a better software demo for a feature is a bit like a commercial. You want to showcase the value without subjecting the prospect to the actual amount of time it takes to master the task, while still showing the benefit in about a minute. It helps to write a script and edit well to make this happen.
A Thread from This Week
A Twitter thread to dive into a topic
Why is Wordle fun? It’s time-constrained, moderately difficult, and relatively easy to win. Here’s are some strategy thoughts from @giorgiogilestro:
Links for Reading and Sharing
These are links that caught my 👀
1/ Simple design is better design - how do you make a design easier to understand? Make it simpler by using fewer design choices and letting the UX drive the user’s expectations. It’s true: no one wants to read more than one or two fonts and a few point sizes in your slide, app, or presentation. Constraints like this make designs faster to build and better to use.
2/ What’s in a good error? - when software doesn't work right, how should you message what happens? Gunnar Morling has a concise summary of writing a good error message, including how to structure the information and what to include. A “good” error then is one that is descriptive, clear, and points you to what went wrong using simple and consistent language.
3/ A diverse set of charts - FiveThirtyEight - one place to find lots of interactive graphics - shares their list of the infographics from 2021. While this isn’t a list of all infoviz that was created last year, it gives you a good overview of the data visualizations shared on one of the most popular web sites in the world. (Making it an excellent source for your swipe list of ideas.)
On the Reading/Watching List
Some things to watch or read, in no particular order
Reading: An overview of lithium battery recycling. If many (or all) of us drivers who currently use Internal Combustion Engines start buying electric cars, how do we solve the problem of what to do with the used batteries? This is one of the paradoxes of improving our economy and our emissions by making them “greener”: we need to consider the entire value chain when looking at emissions and the cost of changing the economy. We need to do it - and fixing all of the inputs (and outputs) will create new kinds of jobs and industries.
Reading: An explainer about Tiktok. Why read an article about a video platform? Because TikTok is an information blender of intent through video interaction. It can turn a cat video into something like this sound pastiche:
To summarize:
TikTok’s algorithm is the Sorting Hat from the Harry Potter universe. Just as that magical hat sorts students at Hogwarts into the Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin houses, TikTok’s algorithm sorts its users into dozens and dozens of subcultures.
TikTok manages to create videos that people hate to watch and those that people love to watch, and to deliver them to the right people. This is a really interesting form of signaling.
What to do next
Hit reply if you’ve got links to share, data stories, or want to say hello.
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Want more essays? Read on Data Operations or other writings at gregmeyer.com.
The next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.” - Chris Dixon