How to make an explainer video for software

An explainer video answers one question for someone who doesn't know your product yet: "What is this, and why should I care?" The classic explainer is an animated cartoon with a voiceover. For software, there's a faster and more honest option: show the real product. A screen-based explainer uses recordings of your actual interface, framed and paced well, with a clear voice telling the story. It's cheaper to make, easier to update, and viewers trust it more because they see the real thing.

This guide covers how to structure an explainer, how long to make it, how to write and record it, and how to make it look good without an animation studio.

Explainer, demo or tutorial?

These three get mixed up, and the mix-up is why many explainers are too long.

Type	Question it answers	Typical length	Viewer
Explainer	"What is this and why do I need it?"	60 to 120 seconds	Someone who has never seen your product
Product demo	"How does it work in practice?"	1 to 3 minutes	Someone evaluating it
Tutorial	"How do I do this specific task?"	As long as the task	Someone already using it

An explainer sells the idea. It shows the product, but only enough to make the promise believable. If you find yourself explaining settings, you've drifted into a product demo or a tutorial.

The structure: problem, solution, how, call to action

Almost every good explainer follows the same four beats.

Problem (10 to 20 seconds). Describe the pain in the viewer's own words. Be specific. "Every Friday you copy numbers from four tools into one spreadsheet" lands harder than "reporting is hard".
Solution (10 to 15 seconds). Introduce your product as the answer, in one sentence. "Ledger pulls those numbers in for you and builds the report on its own."
How it works (30 to 60 seconds). Show three steps or three key moments, not ten features. Each moment gets one screen recording and one or two sentences.
Call to action (5 to 10 seconds). One next step that matches where the video lives: "Start free", "Book a demo", "See pricing".

Three moments is not a rule of nature, but it's a good limit. Viewers remember three things. They don't remember seven.

How long should it be?

For a homepage or landing page, aim for 60 to 90 seconds. Up to two minutes works if the product genuinely needs it. Wistia's long-running analysis of viewer engagement shows that engagement drops as videos get longer, and that the first minute or two holds attention best (Wistia).

The easiest way to control length is the script. At a natural speaking pace of around 150 words per minute:

Target length	Script length
60 seconds	About 150 words
90 seconds	About 225 words
120 seconds	About 300 words

If your script is 500 words, the video will be over three minutes no matter how fast you edit. Cut words, not pauses.

Write the script first

Write the script before you record a single frame. For an explainer, write every word: the timing matters too much to improvise.

Write for the ear. Short sentences, everyday words. Read it out loud and rewrite anything you stumble on.
One idea per sentence. If a sentence has "and" in it twice, split it.
Talk about outcomes, not features. "Your report is ready before your coffee" beats "automated data aggregation".
Match words to pictures. Next to each line, note what the viewer sees. If a line has no picture, it might not need to be there.

Record the voice

Most people find it easier to record the voiceover separately from the screen. Read the finished script into a good microphone in a quiet, soft room, take by take. Then record the screen to match.

Tips for a voice that sounds confident:

Stand up, or at least sit up straight. It changes how you sound.
Smile on the friendly lines. You can hear it.
Leave a short pause between sections; you'll need room to cut.
Record each line two or three times and keep the best.

If you'd rather talk over the screen live, that works too. Just keep the script in front of you.

Make the screen recordings look good

Raw screen recordings of a 5K display look tiny and busy in a 1080p video. A few things turn them into explainer material:

Use a demo account with realistic, attractive data. Empty dashboards make products look unfinished.
Zoom in on the action. In an explainer, every shot should have one clear point of focus. Zooming in on the button or result you're talking about does that.
Calm cursor movement. A shaky cursor zigzagging across the screen looks nervous. Smoothing helps a lot.
Frame it. Place the recording on a background with padding, rounded corners and a soft shadow, or inside a browser or MacBook frame. It looks designed rather than captured.
Keep shots short. In a 90-second explainer, few shots should last longer than ten seconds.

Titles, text and arrows

Explainers often use title cards, short on-screen text and arrows. In Dolly you have three ways to do it:

Insert a title or end card, text, an arrow or a box in the editor, with your logo, colour and font from the brand kit.
Draw while you record. Press ⇧⌘D and circle or point at what you're talking about; the lines fade after a few seconds and stay editable afterwards.
Let zoom do the pointing. A zoom on the right element often replaces an arrow, and it reads better on a phone. A highlight mask dims everything except one area, like a spotlight.

Reading a script? Dolly's teleprompter (⇧⌘1) sits right under your camera, scrolls at your pace and never shows up in the video. Afterwards, word-by-word captions keep the message readable with the sound off.

Music and sound

Background music sets the pace of an explainer. Pick something with a steady rhythm and no vocals, and keep it well under your voice. Ducking (lowering music automatically while someone speaks) saves a lot of manual volume work. Add a soft click sound if your recording has important clicks; it makes the action feel physical.

A workflow in Dolly

Here's how a screen-based explainer comes together in Dolly on a Mac:

Record each moment as its own take. Press ⇧⌘2, record the first moment, stop, and repeat. Several takes can go on one timeline.
Shape the camera work. Your clicks turn into smooth zooms automatically. Adjust their strength between 1.2× and 3.5×, add a manual zoom with Z, or use the Loupe to magnify a detail while keeping context.
Style it. Pick a background, padding, corners and shadow, or a browser or MacBook frame. Save it as a preset so every explainer looks the same.
Add voice and music. Record your microphone with the screen or bring a camera bubble in. Choose one of the music tracks and let ducking keep it under your voice. Voice clean-up removes hum and background noise on your Mac.
Tighten. Split with S, cut, and use "Find silences & typing" to remove dead air or speed up typing.
Captions. Generate captions on your Mac, fix the product names, and export an SRT if your player supports it.
Export. 16:9 MP4 for your site and YouTube, then the same project as 1:1 or 9:16 for social.

More on this in explainer videos with Dolly and marketing videos. Dolly is free with no time limit, and Pro removes the small Made with Dolly logo: download it here.

Checklist

[ ] The problem is stated in the viewer's words in the first 15 seconds.
[ ] The product is introduced in one sentence.
[ ] You show three moments, not ten features.
[ ] The script is under 300 words.
[ ] Every shot has one clear point of focus.
[ ] Captions are on and readable on a phone.
[ ] The video ends with one clear call to action.

An explainer is never finished. Watch where viewers drop off, rewrite the weakest line, and record that shot again. With screen-based explainers, that's an afternoon's work, not a new agency brief.