How to write a product demo video script: a 90-second template

Most demo video scripts go wrong in one of two ways. The voice-over is longer than the footage, so someone speeds up the narrator or slows down the screen. Or the script is a tour of the navigation that never shows the product doing the job someone would pay for. Both are fixed on paper, before anything is recorded.

The template below writes out the rules Redemo's script writer follows for every demo it produces: the same word budget, the same scene limits, the same voice-over rules. You can apply them by hand, with any recording tool.

Start with the word budget

Narration for a product demo runs at about 2.5 words per second. Measured on seven hand-written voice-overs for an AI presenter, it ran between 2.3 and 2.8. That one number turns a target length into a word count:

Treat the budget as a hard limit. The spoken line decides how long a scene lasts, and the footage then has to be stretched or squeezed to match it. Up to about 20% nobody notices. Beyond that the cursor drifts or races, and the video feels wrong without anyone being able to say why. Slightly under budget is fine; over is not.

The scene limits come from the same arithmetic. Under about 8 seconds there is no time to show a move and say what it means. Over 25 seconds, a scene is usually two scenes, or a screen held still while the narrator catches up. Split 40 seconds six ways and every share falls under the 8-second floor, which is why a short video has three scenes at most.

The 90-second template, scene by scene

A full demo is for someone who has never seen the product, and it may be the only video of it they watch. Show the two or three flows that make someone want to sign up, not every menu. Here is the shape, filled in for an imaginary invoicing app. Its numbers belong to the example: in your script, say only the ones that are true today.

Scene 1 · 0:00–0:15 · the problem, inside the product

On screen: the invoice list, filtered to unpaid and sorted by days overdue.

Voice-over (38 words): “Late payments usually live in a spreadsheet and in somebody's memory. Here, every invoice you have sent sits in one list, sorted by who owes you and for how long, so each morning starts with who to chase.”

Scene 2 · 0:15–0:35 · the first flow

On screen: a new invoice for an existing client, created from their previous one, one line changed, sent.

Voice-over (50 words): “A new invoice starts from the last one you sent that client, with the rates, the payment terms and the tax already filled in. You change what changed this month and send it. The client receives a link and can pay by card or bank transfer without creating an account.”

Scene 3 · 0:35–0:55 · the second flow

On screen: the reminder settings, with a two-step schedule already set.

Voice-over (49 words): “Reminders follow a schedule you set once: a polite note three days after the due date, a firmer one after ten. Each reminder quotes the amount, the original date and the payment link, so nobody on your team has to write the awkward email or remember to send it.”

Scene 4 · 0:55–1:15 · the result

On screen: an invoice that was paid, then the monthly report.

Voice-over (50 words): “When the client pays, the invoice closes itself and the payment is matched to it in your books. At the end of the month the report is already right, because nobody had to pair a bank line with an invoice number, and your accountant gets the same export every time.”

Scene 5 · 1:15–1:30 · how to start

On screen: the plans page, or the invoice list with nothing overdue.

Voice-over (36 words): “You can connect your bank and send your first invoices on the free plan. When you invoice more than five clients a month, the paid plan is twelve dollars, and everything you set up carries over.”

That is 223 words over 90 seconds, inside the budget, and every line says something the screen cannot.

Rules for what is on screen

• Open on the product doing something. Not a logo, not a title card, not the login page. The first scene is already the work.
• One move per scene. “Open the reminder settings” is a scene. “Introduce the product” is not. If a scene's voice-over carries two thoughts, it is two scenes.
• Every scene starts from a screen you can open directly. Assume nothing carries over from the previous scene: a half-filled form is empty again, a dialog is closed, and a record an earlier scene would have created does not exist. It makes retakes cheap, and it is the only way to re-record a single scene after a release.
• Film a demo account with realistic data. An empty list sells nothing. Fill the account with clients, invoices and history before you record, and keep it that way.
• Describe screens by what they are for. Write “open the reminder settings”, not the label of a tab you think is there. Labels change between releases; what a screen is for rarely does.

Rules for the voice-over

• Say what it means, not what is happening. The screen already shows the clicking. “We open the dashboard, then go to settings” spends seconds on something the viewer can see. Say whose problem the screen solves, what it replaces, what it saves them.
• Do not read the screen aloud. No button names, no “click”, no “here you can see”, no “on the left”. If a label matters, say what the thing does.
• Be specific rather than enthusiastic. Real flows and real objects convince; adjectives do not. Cut “seamlessly”, “effortlessly”, “powerful” and every exclamation mark.
• Invent nothing. Prices, customer counts, integrations, where data is hosted: say them only if they are true, and expect them to change. A demo that quotes last quarter's price is worse than one that quotes none.
• Talk to the viewer. Second person, present tense. Never “the user”.
• Write for the ear. No parentheses, no lists, no symbols a narrator has to interpret. Spell out an acronym that is said letter by letter, and keep each sentence short enough to say in one breath.
• Write one piece, not captions. The lines play back to back, so each one picks up where the last left off.

The 40-second feature video is a different brief

A feature video plays on the page about that feature, or next to a link that named it. The viewer clicked; they know what the product is and what they came for. Cutting the 90-second script down does not produce it. It has its own rules:

• Two or three scenes, never one. One continuous shot is a screen recording, not an edited video.
• Scene one opens with the feature already on screen. No introduction, no “in this video we'll look at”, no trip through the navigation on the way in.
• One flow, end to end. The screen where the work starts, the move that does it, and what it leaves behind. If the flow needs a detour through another feature, cut the detour: that is another video.
• End on what changed. The last line lands on the thing that now exists or the state that moved. No price, no sign-up line, no recap: the page around the video makes the offer.

For the invoicing app, the reminders feature in 40 seconds:

Scene 1 · 0:00–0:20. On screen: the reminder settings, the second step moved from ten days to seven. Voice-over (43 words): “Set the schedule once, in one place: a polite note three days after the due date, a firmer one a week later. Every overdue invoice follows it from now on, including the ones that were already late on the day you changed it.”

Scene 2 · 0:20–0:40. On screen: an overdue invoice with its reminder history and the date of the next one. Voice-over (48 words): “Each invoice shows what went out and when the next reminder goes. The client gets the amount, the original date and a payment link, and the invoice closes the moment they use it. Nobody on your team writes the follow-up or keeps track of who got which one.”

How long should a product demo video be?

It depends on where it plays, because that decides what the viewer already knows.

• Homepage or product overview: about 90 seconds. Enough for two or three flows at a pace people can follow. Past two minutes you are making a tutorial.
• Feature page, ad or launch post: 30 to 45 seconds. One feature, one flow, no introduction.
• Onboarding and help content: as long as the task. That is documentation with a voice, a different job from a demo.

Keep the script after the recording

A script outlives its video. When the interface changes, a script written by intent still describes the film you need, and re-recording means following it again rather than starting over. Keep it next to the video, and update the lines that name prices or numbers whenever those change.

It is also the format Redemo works from. You approve a script like the one above; a browser films each scene in your live app and an AI presenter narrates it over the real footage. If you enable automatic updates for a video, the same approved script is filmed again after we detect a release and verify that its path still works, within your plan's monthly allowance. If the path no longer works, the published video stays live until the script is fixed. See how it works, or compare it with other approaches in our guide to demo video tools.

The script is one step of the job. For the others, preparing the demo account, filming, voice and publishing, see how to make a product demo video; for the 40-second version around a release, our product launch video playbook.