Lesson 2 of 3 · 6 min
The first eight seconds
The highest-leverage part of any demo, and how to write it.
Eight-second retention correlates with completion at 0.71 across our dataset. Nothing else comes close. This lesson is about how to spend them.
What not to do
- A logo animation. Nobody has ever stayed for a logo.
- “Hi, I'm Alex, and today I'm going to show you…” — you have spent four seconds on scheduling information.
- A problem statement in the abstract. Show the problem instead of describing it.
- An agenda slide. If the demo needs an agenda it is too long.
What works
Open mid-action, on the product, at a moment that is legible without context. The strongest openings we see are a single fast sequence showing the outcome — the thing done, in three seconds — followed by “here is how that happened.”
“Start at the moment a film editor would start: after the setup, in the middle of the scene.”
Writing the first line
The first spoken line should contain a specific noun from your viewer's world and a verb that implies change. “Pricing a multi-leg shipment takes our customers about forty minutes. Watch this.” is better than any amount of positioning language.