A Step-by-Step Guide to App Store Previews

Over the last several years, with the explosion of both Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, apps have become ubiquitous—and a killer app has become a vital part of the success of virtually any product, service, or business.There are 5 million different apps across both stores, from banking apps to memberships to games to organization tools to daily yoga. There is an app for nearly every facet of people’s lives and having an amazing app at your disposal can greatly help grow your business, yet getting downloads is increasingly harder to do unless you find ways to stand out from the pack in these overcrowded app stores.

It goes without saying that one of the key pillars of your success and growth is a well-put-together app. As much as word of mouth can help you, you can’t rely on that alone because as the popularity of app stores, and apps in general, have increased, so too has the functionality of app stores. Before, one was generally only able to preview their apps via screenshots and product subscriptions. Now, though, you can create effective app store preview videos to help better shine a light on your apps.

In this step-by-step guide to app preview videos, we’re going to break down how to make a concise, effective, and eye-catching app preview to showcase your app to potential customers and get your app climbing up the app store charts.
 

Step 1: Create an Outline for Your App Store Preview

 
The process of creating an app preview video may be involved, but the payoff will be worth it. First and foremost, you need to create an in-depth outline of your app store preview—you need to know what information is most important about your app, and how best to translate that information into a compelling, easy-to-digest, short video that can work well for the app store.

That can be quite the daunting task to ask of someone, especially if they’re starting from zero. This is why brands trust Explainify to jump in and make their lives a lot easier. With our team of veteran industry experts, we can work with you every step of the way.

What’s more, we can be as hands-off or as hands-on as you need. Whether you’ve got the perfect idea and a step-by-step plan that you need us to execute, or you need help from brainstorm to finished product, Explainify is here to help make your app preview video the best it can possibly be.

The outline itself is a multi-step process, so let’s break down what that looks like:

Figure Out The Key Aspects of Your Product/Service/Business:

First and foremost, before you can start to actually work on a script, shoot, and edit your app store video, you need to figure out what sets you apart—what makes your product, business, or app unique. Basically, you need to sit down and come up with an elevator pitch for your product, business, or app. How can you best sum up everything that makes your product, business, or app, in 30 seconds to a minute—max? There are a lot of different types of videos you can use to get your point across, so let’s explore them to find the best fit for you.

A great way to sum up all of the great qualities about your product, business, or app, in a concise, simple-to-follow, and accessible way is via an explainer video, a form of video that Explainify specializes in. Explainer videos do a great job of simplifying things, and, indeed, explaining to audiences the best qualities of your product, business, or app, that make you stand out above the crowd.

Maybe you have a strong brand that just needs one little push to get over the proverbial hump. That’s where brand videos come in and would be a great fit for your app preview video.

Or, let’s say your app isn’t for a brand but a product, or you need a sales video for your app. You could consider product videos, sales videos, public relations videos, and so much more. You can even combine aspects of all of these types of videos if your app is multi-faceted.

Say your app is one part brand ambassador, one part product page, and one part store, all while selling the cultural significance of your brand—doing public relations for your brand. That’s a lot of things to do, all at once, but strong apps can do that. And a strong app store preview video from Explainify can help you translate all of that information to prospective audiences in an easy-to-digest, engaging way.

Once you’ve decided what type of video you’re going to use, it’s time to work on your outline. Actually creating the outline is a multi-step process. It’s not just figuring out what is essential to say about your app, but also breaking down how you want to say it.

Write a Rough Plan for your App Store Preview

• You’ll need a plan—what’s the best way to consolidate everything you need to say, in the least amount of time possible, and in the most engaging way possible?
• Then you need to work out how you’re going to demonstrate it. How are you going to translate everything into a visual and auditory language? How will you marry the words you say with visuals and audio cues. What those visuals look like? What kind of cuts, and editing techniques do you want to use?

Of course, since this is an outline, you don’t need to be exact. Things can change once you get down to the nitty-gritty of putting your app store preview video together, but if you have a clear vision in mind from the get-go, it becomes that much easier to execute.

Explainify is here to help and do the heavy lifting for you. Not only can we help with actually putting your video together, but we can help with every step of the process, and that includes your outline.
 

Step 2: Write Your Script

Now, you’ve put together your outline, and you know what you want to say so let’s write the script. If you’ve never written a video script before, this can seem like a daunting task. When it comes to catching and keeping people’s attention, you need an entertaining and engaging script that hooks your audience and leaves them wanting to learn more.

Explainify can help. With almost 10 years of experience and thousands of videos later, we know exactly how to craft a captivating script for each and every app store preview video we make based on our trademarked frustration-free™ process. We’ve got you, whether you need us to take all of the script-writing responsibilities off of your shoulders, or just punch-up your own script and take it to the next level to create a killer app store preview.
 

Step 3: Narrate and Animate Your Video

You’ve got your awesome script, and you’re ready to put those words to good use and record your voice over (VO). The process might not be hard, but what happens if you’re not comfortable with recording your own narration? Or if you simply don’t have access to high-quality recording software/microphones?

It can be a lot to ask of someone to invest in these things, and VO work is a very specific and demanding skill. Regardless of your comfort level and budget, we’re here to help, and take the reins: we have all of the talent and passion you’ll need to ensure that your script is done right with on-brand, high-quality VO and voice actors who know how to command attention and bring your script to life in an engaging way.

Does your product need a physical demonstration? Are you speaking in abstracts that, with words alone, can be a bit confusing? Do you need infographics or some kind of strong visual cues to help better explain to people? We’ve got you fully covered.

You also have to actually animate your video. What that animation looks like can vary depending on your needs—again, whether it’s a brand video, product video, sales video, public relations video, or a combination with live-action content mixed in there too.

Regardless of what kind of explainer video for your app store preview you’re working on, it is a lot of work—even if you’re working from a template, but especially if you’re trying to do everything from scratch. It’s time-consuming, often frustrating, and can be incredibly expensive; whether you’re doing it yourself or employing a freelance animator or video editor. Explainify can alleviate all of your headaches by simply doing that work for you—by taking your script, your outline, and working our magic to produce exactly the style of app store preview videos that work for you and your brand, product, and apps.
 

Step 4: Choose Your Soundtrack

It’s not enough to simply narrate, animate, and edit your app store preview video. The most engaging videos often have some kind of musical accompaniment to them. Trying to score your own video, on top of narrating, animating, and editing it? That’s a lot to ask of someone. Even if you don’t score it yourself, outsourcing the scores, or finding royalty-free music can be taxing. So why not let us cover it?
 

Step 5: Edit Your Video

 
So your video is animated, your script is recorded, but now you’re staring at a video timeline with a whole mess of raw video and you don’t even know where to begin.

You only have a short window to impress your viewer (7-10 seconds to be precise), so you need to make your preview as engaging as possible with slick transitions and professional edits. The quality of your final product will have a huge impact on how many views and downloads you get. We highly recommend our friends at VidYard if you’re looking for quality screen recording software, or you can check out these free options.

If this sounds like a lot of work, we can make it easy. Explainify knows just how to cut, tweak, and transition shots in the perfect way to ensure that your app store video is the best it can possibly be.
 

Your App Store Preview, Your Way—With a Little Help

At the end of the day, your potential customers or clients have a lot of options—and nearly each and every app they see has a well-produced app preview video. This means that you need to go above and beyond to not only grab someone’s attention, but keep it, and ensure that your app gets downloaded.

Now that you’ve seen everything that goes into making an app store preview video that stands out from the crowd, you should have a good idea of what (if anything) you want to handle in-house and what you’d rather let the experts take care of.

Explainify’s team of experts produce explainer videos that engage with the audience via punchy, engaging visuals, catchy audio, slick editing, and a concise, easy-to-follow script. All of these aspects add up to videos that not only lead the industry, but guarantee hits and downloads for your app, and in turn, guarantee success for you and your business, product, or app.

Reach out today and we can get started on your standout app store preview video immediately.