To make a product explainer video for a SaaS app, explain the job the product does before you show any of the product. Write a script of 130 to 200 words (about 60 to 80 seconds at 150 spoken words a minute) in four parts: the situation the viewer is in today, the one idea your product is built on, what changes when they use it, and one next step. Draw the situation and the idea rather than screen-recording the dashboard, because a viewer who does not yet care about your product cannot read your interface. Keep each scene to one claim, check every number and product name on screen, and only show real UI at the end, briefly, as proof that the thing exists.

Why the dashboard tour fails

The default SaaS explainer is a screen recording of the app with a cheerful voiceover: here is the pipeline view, here is the contact page, here is the reports tab. It is easy to make and it rarely works, for three plain reasons.

First, the viewer has no context for what they are looking at. Your team has stared at that interface for two years and reads it at a glance. A stranger sees a grid of grey boxes, a sidebar with eleven items, and a cursor moving too fast.

Second, an interface shows what the product has, not what it does. "Here is the reports tab" is a feature. "You stop finding out on Friday that a deal went cold on Tuesday" is the job. Buyers pay for the job.

Third, the UI changes. A dashboard recording is out of date the next time design ships a sidebar change, and an explainer with an old interface in it looks like an abandoned product.

A drawn explainer avoids all three. The viewer sees the problem as a simple picture they recognise, the idea as a diagram, and the interface only once, as a closing shot that can be replaced without touching the rest.

The four-part structure

The idea is the hard part. Most SaaS products, if you are honest, are built on one move: put the data in one place, make the next action obvious, do the boring step automatically, or tell you before something goes wrong. If you cannot say yours in one sentence, the video will not say it either, and the problem is not the video.

Worked example: a CRM in 60 seconds

Take a small-team CRM whose real idea is that every deal has one owner and one next step, and the product nags when a deal has neither. Here is the script, about 135 words, which runs just under a minute.

Situation. Your team has forty open deals. Some live in a spreadsheet, some in someone's inbox, and one lives entirely in Priya's head. On Friday you find out the biggest one went quiet three weeks ago.The idea. Every deal gets two things: one owner and one next step with a date. That is the whole system. When a deal has no next step, or the date passes, the owner hears about it that morning, not at the end of the quarter.The change. The Friday surprise stops happening. Your pipeline review stops being a hunt for status and becomes ten minutes on the deals that are actually stuck. New reps see exactly what to do on their first day.Next step. Import your spreadsheet and see which of your deals have no next step right now. It takes about five minutes.

And the scene list it produces, one claim per scene:

1. A messy desk: a spreadsheet, an inbox, a thought bubble over one person. Labelled "40 open deals, 3 places".
2. A calendar with Friday circled and a deal card going grey three weeks earlier.
3. A single deal card with two slots drawn in: Owner, Next step plus date.
4. The date on the card passing, and a small alert arriving at the owner's morning.
5. The pipeline review shrinking from a long table to three highlighted rows.
6. A new rep with one card in front of them and the next step circled.
7. The real import screen, held for four seconds, with the call to action.

Notice that the product's name appears once, in the last scene, and the interface appears once, also in the last scene. Everything before it is about the viewer's week.

The sample above is not a SaaS app, it is contactless payment, but the method is the same one you want: each step of the flow gets its own drawn moment, in order, and the viewer follows the mechanism instead of hunting for a cursor.

Where the video will live changes the script

The same product can need three different explainers, and trying to make one video do all three jobs is the most common reason it does none of them well.

• Homepage. Sixty to ninety seconds, written to work with the sound off because most visitors will not unmute. The one-diagram version of your idea matters most here. There is a separate guide on making an explainer for your startup homepage.
• Sales follow-up. Two to three minutes. You can assume the viewer already had the problem, so cut the situation down and spend the time on the idea and on the one objection your prospects always raise.
• Inside the product. Thirty to sixty seconds per feature, for people who already signed up. Skip the situation entirely and explain the idea behind the feature they are about to use. This is closer to an onboarding video than to marketing.

If your product is an API or has a developer audience, the structure shifts again: the viewer wants to see a request travel through the system. See how to make a video that explains how your API works.

Picking a visual style

A style is a register, and the register should match how your buyers want to feel about the purchase.

• Whiteboard reads as "here is how it works". Good for technical products, data tools and anything bought by engineers.
• Cutout reads as a friendly, physical product story. Good for flows with a few objects that move between places: a payment, a booking, an order, a deal card.
• Poster carries one striking idea per scene. Good for a homepage where you have a single strong before and after.
• Doodle on paper feels informal and personal, which suits founder-led products and early-stage launches.

Pick one and keep it. A video that switches style between scenes looks like it was assembled from three different vendors, which is not the impression a SaaS company wants to give.

Make it

1. 1

   Write the one-sentence idea

   Finish the line 'Our product works because...' in under twenty words. If it needs a comma and an 'and', you have two ideas; pick the one buyers mention first in sales calls.

2. 2

   Write 130 to 200 words in four parts

   Situation, idea, change, next step. Use a real number from your own customers in the change section, or leave the number out.

3. 3

   Paste the script and keep your wording

   In openCanviz, paste the script, choose Keep my wording so the narration is exactly what you approved, set a target of about a minute, and pick one style. It drafts a scene per beat with a drawing for each.

4. 4

   Fix the scenes, not the whole video

   Click into any scene and correct labels, rename things to match your product's actual vocabulary, and redraw any scene that shows a feature instead of the job.

5. 5

   Add the real screen last

   Keep the one shot of your actual interface for the final scene, so a UI change next quarter means swapping one scene, not remaking the video.

6. 6

   Record your own voice if you can

   A founder's voice on a drawn explainer is more convincing than any generated voice. Replace the generated narration with your recording scene by scene.

The checks before you publish

Generated drafts are good at structure and occasionally wrong about specifics, and in a product video the specifics are what a sceptical buyer looks at.

• Every number on screen matches a number you can source. "Forty deals" in the narration should be forty in the drawing.
• Product and feature names are spelled exactly as they appear in your app, including capitals.
• No competitor is named or shown. It invites comparison on their terms and ages badly.
• No real customer logo or name appears without written permission.
• The call to action names the same thing as the button on the page where the video sits.
• With the sound off, the scene list still tells the story in order.

Common questions

How long should a SaaS explainer video be? For a homepage, 60 to 90 seconds. For a sales follow-up, two to three minutes. Feature explainers inside the product, 30 to 60 seconds each. At 150 spoken words a minute that is roughly 150 to 225 words, 300 to 450 words, and 75 to 150 words.

Should I show my actual product at all? Yes, once, near the end, as proof it is real. A few seconds of a clean, current screen is enough. The rest of the video is about the viewer's problem and your idea, which do not change when the UI does.

Do I need a professional agency for this? Not for the first version. The expensive part of an agency explainer is the scriptwriting and the illustration, and the script is the part only you can write well anyway, because you have heard the sales calls. Make a version yourself, show it to five prospects, and decide later whether a commissioned one is worth it.

What if our product does many things? Make one video about the one thing that gets people to sign up, and separate short videos for the rest. A video that lists eight features is remembered as "it does a lot of stuff", which is not a reason to buy.

Can the same video be used in other languages? Yes. Make the English version first, duplicate the project, and switch the narration language, then check that product names have not been translated where they should stay in English.