Explainer videos for SaaS onboarding: what to make and where to put them

Explainer videos help SaaS onboarding when each one answers a single question a new user has at a specific moment: “what is this product for?”, “what is a workspace?”, “how do I connect my data?”. The playbook is simple: map the moments where users get stuck, make one short video per moment, and place it right there (in the empty state, the tooltip, the welcome email), not in a video library nobody opens.

Why short explainers work for onboarding

New users don’t lack features; they lack a model of how the product thinks. What is a “project” versus a “workspace”? Why do I need to connect an integration before anything shows up? A 60-second animated explainer can install that model faster than a page of documentation, because it shows the relationships between things instead of describing them.

Short videos also fit the way onboarding actually happens: in fragments, between other tasks. A two-minute video placed next to an empty dashboard gets watched at the moment it is useful. A 15-minute webinar recording gets bookmarked and forgotten.

The onboarding video map

Before writing anything, list the videos you need. Most SaaS products need some version of these six:

Start with the first three. If your activation metric depends on one specific step (connecting a data source, sending a first invoice, publishing a first page), make that step’s video first.

Concept videos vs. task videos

This distinction saves a lot of rework. A concept video explains an idea: “a pipeline is a list of stages, each deal moves from left to right”. It uses diagrams, simple icons and simplified mock-ups of the interface. It stays true even when the UI changes. A task video shows exact clicks: “open Settings, click Integrations, paste your key”. It needs a real screen recording and has to be redone whenever the interface moves.

Motion-design explainers are best for concepts, first wins and “why” questions. Screen recordings are best for step-by-step tasks. A good onboarding flow uses both: the animated explainer first, to build the model, then a short recording or an interactive walkthrough for the clicks. If you are deciding between animated explainers and a talking presenter, see motion design vs AI avatar video.

How to script an onboarding explainer

Onboarding scripts differ from marketing scripts in one way: the viewer has already signed up. Skip the pitch. Start from the situation they are in right now.

A structure that works

1. Where you are: “You’ve just created your first workspace, and it’s empty.”
2. What it’s for: “A workspace holds everything one team works on: projects, people and files.”
3. How it fits together: two or three relationships, each with its own visual. “Projects live inside a workspace. Tasks live inside projects. People are invited to the workspace and assigned to tasks.”
4. Your next step: one action, named exactly as it appears in the UI. “Click New project to create your first one.”

Example (about 120 words, ~50 seconds)

“You’ve just connected your store, and the dashboard is still empty. That’s normal: your first sync takes a few minutes. Here’s what happens meanwhile. Every order becomes a row, with its customer and its products. Orders from the same customer are grouped into one profile, so you can see who buys again. Each profile then lands in a segment: new, returning or at risk, based on their last purchase. Those segments are what your automations use. When a customer moves from returning to at risk, the matching email goes out on its own. So the empty screen is about to fill up with real people. While you wait, open Segments and pick the one you want to start with.”

The onboarding template and the SaaS explainer template give you briefs with this structure. For more fill-in structures, see the explainer video script template.

Visual choices for SaaS explainers

• Simplified UI mock-ups, not screenshots. Show the shape of your interface (a list, a card, a button), not every pixel. It stays readable on a phone and survives redesigns.
• Diagrams for relationships. Boxes and arrows that build in step with the narration are the clearest way to show “X contains Y” or “A triggers B”.
• Your brand colors. Onboarding videos sit inside your product; they should look like they belong there.
• Captions always. Many users watch inside the app with the sound off, or at work. Word-by-word captions make the video usable silently; see why word-by-word captions work.
• Names exactly as in the UI. If the button says “New project”, the narration and the title say “New project”, not “create a project”.

Where to place onboarding videos

Placement matters more than polish. A good video in the wrong place doesn’t get watched.

• Empty states: the single best spot. The user is looking at a blank screen, wondering what to do.
• Onboarding checklists: one video per checklist item that isn’t self-explanatory.
• Lifecycle emails: a thumbnail linking to the video, with a subject line that names the question (“What’s a segment, in 60 seconds”).
• Help center and docs: at the top of the matching concept page, followed by the written reference.
• Sales and success calls: send the concept video before the call so the call can focus on the customer’s case.

Vertical 9:16 videos also work on your social channels as product education, which doubles their use. On a desktop page, a vertical video sits well in a side column or a modal.

How to know if a video helps

Views alone don’t tell you much about onboarding videos. What you want to know is whether the people who watched reach the next step more often. A few practical signals you can track with the tools you already have:

• Completion of the matching step: among new users who played the “first win” video, how many completed the first-win action, compared with those who didn’t play it?
• Support questions: do tickets about the concept the video explains go down after you place it?
• Time to first value: does the delay between signup and the first meaningful action shrink?
• Drop-off point: if your player shows where people stop watching, a drop in the first seconds usually means the opening doesn’t match the question the user has at that moment.

Compare carefully: users who choose to watch a video may already be more motivated. Where you can, alternate placements over time or between cohorts rather than drawing conclusions from a single before-and-after.

Localizing onboarding videos

If you have users in several countries, onboarding is where localization pays off first: a new user who is still deciding whether your product is for them is the most likely to give up on a video in a second language. Translate the script (not word for word: adapt the examples and keep sentences short), keep UI names exactly as they appear in the localized interface, and use a narration and captions in the same language. Motiongist narrates in 10 languages with the same set of voices; see the AI voice languages for how each one works.

Keeping videos up to date

Onboarding content goes stale as the product evolves. A few habits keep the maintenance manageable:

1. Keep a simple inventory: video, question it answers, where it’s placed, last updated.
2. Review it with every major release that touches onboarding.
3. Prefer concept videos that don’t depend on exact UI. Rename a button, and only the task videos need redoing.
4. Keep the scripts in your docs repository so anyone can update them.

Producing onboarding videos at a reasonable cost

A motion-design agency will make a beautiful product overview, but a set of ten onboarding videos that you update every quarter is a different budget. That’s where an AI explainer generator helps. With Motiongist, you paste a script or point it at a help article or a document, choose a voice and your brand look (colors and logo, from the Solo plan), and review the storyboard scene by scene before rendering. Each video comes with word-by-word captions and an SRT file. When the product changes, a revision costs half the base price, because only what changed gets rebuilt. On the Studio plan, the REST API lets you generate videos from your own tooling, for example from your docs pipeline. See the pricing for the details.

If you want to turn a whole help center into a series, read how to repurpose docs into a video series.

One short, well-placed video per sticking point beats a long tour every time. Start with the big picture and the first win, measure whether users reach that first win more often, and build the rest of the map from there.