Are explainer videos worth it in a SaaS landing page?
Are explainer videos worth it in a SaaS landing page?
In one hand, UI changes and improve too fast that next week it will be different from what it's today. In the other, I really hate when explainer videos has nothing to do with the real product that seems deceitful.
What do you think?
I use explainer videos on my landing page: podqueue.fm
They definitely take some production time to get exactly right, as well as figuring out the right compression settings and so on. But I feel they really communicate the value of my product in a fast & attention-grabbing way that's hard to do with just screenshots or illustrations.
Definitely feeling this - I had an explainer video but it's been ~year since. I haven't had the time to update the video so now the video is quite outdated.
The concept seems good enough to get people to try out my product but I definitely don't like that it doesn't reflect today's UI.
I'm updating my landing page soon and decided to switch to a photo approach - I think it'll be easier to maintain - hopefully later I can do some sort of virtual environment for people to just test it out right there.
I got chatting to someone in Linkedin the other day because we are using the same open source library for part of our products. He is making something quite cool that addresses the issue of videos becoming out of date:
https://recordonce.com/product
oh cool! I'll check it out :) thanks for the recommendation!
This is the #1 piece of feedback we get for Squeaky! Literally so many people have said 'I love your site, but I'd really like to see some video demos'.
I really need to get on with making them, but I'm worried I can't make them as nice as the rest of the site because I'm not nearly as good at video as I am at web or software design/storytelling 😬 It might just cheapen the rest of the experience if they're not great.
I've actually been considering starting a production company that helps software companies create demo videos and such. I got this idea while working with an analytics company on something similar not only with the demo but also a bunch of presentations that they had so they could use that for marketing purposes.
One of the main bottlenecks though is the revisions process, since we still have to wait for the designer to update some assets from the presentations and such. So, maybe specializing in demo videos only might be a better call.
Although I haven't exactly decided which route to take yet as I've been considering a more productized approach with another niche too.
But I might be able to help you out if you need, either with tips if you have any questions or with actual production. Let me know if you'd like to chat sometime or send me a dm on twitter.
Thanks Kevin! I'll give it a go myself first time around but I'll send you a message when it's done and you can tell me if it's terrible or not 😅
For sure! :)