How long should a product demo video be?

Between sixty and ninety seconds for a landing page or launch post. Record loosely and cut hard: remove every pause, page load and moment you spent reading rather than doing. A ninety-second demo that moves is watched to the end far more often than a four-minute one that covers everything.

How do I make a screen recording look professional?

Three things do most of the work. Zoom in on each action so the viewer knows where to look, cut every pause so the pacing stays tight, and record system audio alongside your narration so the product sounds like software. A camera in the corner during the introduction and close, but small or absent through the dense middle, raises how far people watch.

Should I show my face in a product demo?

Usually at the start and the end, and not through the detailed middle. A person on screen increases retention, but a fixed bubble in the corner gets in the way once the demo becomes dense. That is only possible if your recorder keeps the camera as a separate layer rather than compositing it into the screen while recording.

What software should I use to record a product demo?

Loom is built for speed rather than polish and is the wrong choice for a landing page. OBS Studio captures anything and leaves every edit to you. Camtasia and ScreenFlow are manual editors where each zoom is a keyframe you place. Screen Studio, FocuSee and Prequel make the cinematic pass automatically, which removes most of the editing time.

What resolution should a product demo be recorded at?

Record at your display's full resolution and export at 4K, even if you publish at 1080p. Screen recordings are full of hard edges and small text, which is the hardest case for a video codec, so the extra detail survives compression better. Scale the app or browser up before recording rather than shrinking the video afterwards.

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Guide2 September 20267 min read

How to record a product demo video that people finish

The demo goes on your landing page, in the launch post and in every sales email, and it is usually a one-take screen recording. Here is what we do differently, and most of it happens before you press record.

Musthaq Ahamad

Building Prequel

What is a product demo video?

A product demo video is a short screen recording that shows somebody using your software to get one specific job done. It is not a feature tour and not an ad. It usually runs sixty to ninety seconds, sits on a landing page or in a launch post, and its job is to replace the paragraph explaining what your product does.

What makes one good is mostly restraint: one job rather than every feature, tight pacing with the slow parts cut out, and zooms that put the viewer's eye on the thing being clicked. The recording itself is the easy part.

A product demo is the highest-leverage video most software teams make and the one they put the least thought into. It goes on the landing page, into the launch post, into the sales follow-up and into the onboarding email, and it is usually a screen recording somebody made in one take on a Tuesday.

This guide is about the difference between that and a demo people finish watching. Most of it is not about the recorder.

Before you record

Write the click path, not a script

Pick the one job the viewer wants done and record somebody doing it. Write down the clicks in order and rehearse them once, so the recording does not contain you looking for a menu.

Anything you would have to apologise for on camera, fix before recording. Empty states, a test account called "asdf", a notification from someone's group chat.

Set the stage

Record at the resolution you will publish at, or above it. Scale the browser or app up rather than down, since text that is comfortable on your display is small on a phone. Close everything else and turn on Do Not Disturb.

Use a clean, plausible dataset. Real-looking names and numbers make a demo feel like a product; Lorem ipsum and test test make it feel like a prototype.

Decide about your face

A person in the corner materially increases how far people watch, especially in a launch video. It also gets in the way during the dense parts. The right answer is usually both: present for the introduction and the close, small or absent during the detailed middle.

That is only possible if your recorder keeps the camera separate from the screen rather than compositing it in while you record.

Screen recorders for Mac with a webcam overlay →

The three things that make it look professional

Zooms, on the thing you are doing

This is the single biggest difference between a screen recording and a product video. Your viewer does not know where to look and your cursor is three pixels wide. Pushing in on each action tells them where to look and hides the fact that most of the screen is irrelevant to the current sentence.

Doing this by hand is where the afternoon goes: find the moment, set a keyframe, set the scale, ease it, do it again forty times. Recorders that watch your clicks and typing and place the zooms themselves remove essentially all of that work.

Screen recorders with automatic mouse zoom →

Pacing, which means cutting

Record loosely and cut hard. Every pause where nothing happens, every page load, every moment you were reading rather than doing. A ninety-second demo that moves beats a four-minute one that is complete.

Sound that is not just your microphone

If the product makes a sound, record it. System audio on its own track lets you duck the app's sound under your narration rather than choosing between them, and it is the difference between a demo that feels like software and one that feels like a slideshow.

How to record your Mac screen with internal audio →

What to record with

Most tools in this category will capture a demo. Fewer will produce one.

Loom is built for speed, not polish. Excellent for sending a colleague a walkthrough, wrong for a landing page. The best Loom alternatives →
OBS Studio captures anything at any quality, and leaves every edit to you.
Camtasia and ScreenFlow are real editors where every zoom is a keyframe you place.
Screen Studio, FocuSee and Prequel make the cinematic pass automatically.

The 12 best screen recorders for Mac →

Prequel, for this specifically

We built Prequel for exactly this video, so here is the pitch.

It watches where you click and type while it records, then opens the editor with the pass already made: zooms pushed in on each action, a perspective tilt so the frame has direction, and focus falling away from whatever the zoom is aimed at. The parts of a demo that normally take an afternoon are done before you have watched it back once.

Because it records screen, camera, microphone and system audio as four separate files, the camera is a layer rather than a decision. Full size for your introduction, small during the dense middle, gone for the close, all decided while you watch it back. There is no cap on the length of a take, so a full walkthrough is one recording.

Every frame preset is included, so the same take becomes a 16:9 landing page video and a 9:16 clip for social without cropping the subject out. Export runs to 4K at up to 120 fps, never watermarked, rendered on your own Mac.

$29 once, or $9 a month, with fourteen days free. An Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later.

See what Prequel costs →

Where to go next

For the mechanics of recording on a Mac, including system audio and camera setup:

The complete guide to screen recording on Mac →

If the demo is going on YouTube rather than a landing page:

Screen recording for YouTube →

Frequently asked questions

How long should a product demo video be?: Between sixty and ninety seconds for a landing page or launch post. Record loosely and cut hard: remove every pause, page load and moment you spent reading rather than doing. A ninety-second demo that moves is watched to the end far more often than a four-minute one that covers everything.
How do I make a screen recording look professional?: Three things do most of the work. Zoom in on each action so the viewer knows where to look, cut every pause so the pacing stays tight, and record system audio alongside your narration so the product sounds like software. A camera in the corner during the introduction and close, but small or absent through the dense middle, raises how far people watch.
Should I show my face in a product demo?: Usually at the start and the end, and not through the detailed middle. A person on screen increases retention, but a fixed bubble in the corner gets in the way once the demo becomes dense. That is only possible if your recorder keeps the camera as a separate layer rather than compositing it into the screen while recording.
What software should I use to record a product demo?: Loom is built for speed rather than polish and is the wrong choice for a landing page. OBS Studio captures anything and leaves every edit to you. Camtasia and ScreenFlow are manual editors where each zoom is a keyframe you place. Screen Studio, FocuSee and Prequel make the cinematic pass automatically, which removes most of the editing time.
What resolution should a product demo be recorded at?: Record at your display's full resolution and export at 4K, even if you publish at 1080p. Screen recordings are full of hard edges and small text, which is the hardest case for a video codec, so the extra detail survives compression better. Scale the app or browser up before recording rather than shrinking the video afterwards.