The Perfect Length of an Explainer Video to Drive Better Results

An animated video is a great way to make your target audience interested in what your company offers. How to make an explainer video even more effective? One of the most actionable video marketing tips is to place an engaging call-to-action at the end of the video. 

However, you can face the next question. How to motivate viewers to watch the video from the beginning to the end and see this CTA? In this article, our explainer video production company will try to answer it.

How Long Should an Explainer Video Be?

There is the premise that if a video is short and gets straight to the point, it performs much better and holds the viewer’s attention longer than dragged-out ones. So, if your content is slappy, it will be much more difficult to motivate viewers to watch the video completely.

On the one hand, you need to make a video long enough to display all the essential information about your company, product, or service. On the other hand, it should be short enough not to make the viewers bored and go away before they see a call-to-action. To keep the balance is crucial. 

If you wanted to ask – so what is the perfect explainer video length? Is it a 60-second explainer video? Or 90 seconds? You will probably hear the answer – there is not one-size-fits-all. The ideal length of an explainer video depends on the peculiarities of your product and target audience.

From our experience, the optimal length of the explainer video should be near 1-2 minutes on average. This time is a sweet spot. It is enough to tell all the important to customers, stay unobtrusive, and not to make them bored. 

We have also noticed that 60-second animated videos have much higher user retention rates than longer videos. While explainer videos that are more than 2 minutes long have only a half lower retention rates.

Make Your Video Look Like a Teaser Trailer is to a Hollywood Blockbuster

An explainer video for your product or service is the same as a teaser trailer for a Hollywood movie. At least, it would be best if you tried to make it look like a teaser. Particularly, the first 5 seconds of the video matter even more than the overall length.  

Producing a video, keep in mind that you have only 5 seconds to display something that can make viewers interested in your product, and motivate them to continue watching. During this short time, the video should be so eye-catching and immersive that it hooks the viewers within the first couple of seconds and make them stick around to watch the rest.

You should follow the basic formula of an explainer video success: “Effective is equal to concise and direct.” Try to show the core message and most important information upfront while a viewer listens to you the most actively.

You can also try to produce a video with 5 seconds of the overall length. However, it will work great only if you want to plant a little seed of curiosity in the customer’s minds. But it is not long enough to give even a shortened description of who you are and what you do.

Do Not Try to Explain Everything

As the optimal length spans from 1 to 2 minutes, it becomes clear that to “explain” everything about your brand, product, or service within this short time is a very challenging task. Actually, you should not try to do it. It is better to use this amount of time to convey the main message that will draw the viewer’s attention and steal the heart.

Many companies that provide explainer video production services would recommend sticking to a traditional “beginning, middle, end” story format in an animated video. You can start with a short description of your solution, then give a viewer a quick explanation of how your product or service solves a problem, and show a sweet call-to-action that summarizes all the previously mentioned information and motivates customers to learn more about a brand and why it is the best on the market. 

The Ideal Video Length Depends on the Intended Platform

The perfect length of the video is different for various platforms where you plan to post your content. Do you intend an animated video to be consumed by the audience right from your website? Or do you expect to use it solely on social media? Whether users prefer a bit longer or shorter videos depends on the platforms.

Entering a particular platform, we already have specific expectations towards the content we will see there. For instance, users on Twitter digest the text content 140 characters or less. At the same time, they expect a published video to correspond to nearly the length of 45 seconds or even less.

Takeaway

The main purpose of an explainer video is to tell about a product or service in the most attractive and unobtrusive way. To achieve the best results, you should keep in mind that the video length plays a significant role here and can influence the effectiveness of the promotion.

In general, the shorter it is, the better. However, a perfect length for an explainer video much depends on your business goal, peculiarities of your target audience, the characteristics of the product (or service), and specifics of the platform on which you intend to post a video.