There are many things to watch out when making an explainer video, here are ten important things to consider:
- Is it short and sweet? Long explainer videos don’t work, people are just not going to watch them. Generally, 85% of people will watch an entire 30-second video, but only 50% will watch a video completely if it’s up to 2 minutes. We like around one minute.
- Does it tell a story? The human mind is hardwired to be most receptive to stories. Stories have structure, at the very least, a 3 act structure: a beginning; a middle; an end.
- Is it relevant to the rest of the content? Who wants to watch an explainer video about something completely different from what is being shown on the page or the site. Make sure it’s in context.
- Get to the point. Don’t keep people guessing what the explainer is about. That isn’t really what explaining is meant to be doing.
- Focus on who your audience is. If you are on a website about mums expecting to have a child, don’t make an explainer about how to avoid getting pregnant. May sound funny, but then…
- Is there some kind of follow up? Are you encouraging your viewer to get in touch with you after the video. Always useful.
- Don’t use far too many words. The odd thing is that explainers tend to be spoken faster than normal (they try to cram in many points they’d like to make), but be careful this doesn’t make the style of your explainer unwatchable. Too much explanation and fast talking will only confuse people.
- Don’t let the images get in the way of what you’re trying to say. You can have the most beautiful explainer in the world, if it’s so beautiful to look at that you haven’t got a clue what is going on, that isn’t likely to work.
- Make it interesting. Don’t be boring. Too many explainers are just plain boring, try to make it interesting to watch.
- Don’t hard sell. If you hard sell, people are going to switch off to your explainer faster than you can blink.
