What is an onboarding video?
An onboarding video is a short recording that helps someone new get going. There are two main kinds, and they need different things.
- Customer (product) onboarding videos show a new user how to set up and get their first result in your product. They are usually screen recordings with a voice, sometimes a camera bubble.
- Employee onboarding videos welcome a new hire: a hello from the team, how the company works, which tools to set up, who to ask. They mix camera clips with screen walkthroughs of internal tools.
For employee onboarding, record each tool walkthrough once and keep them in the place your new hires already read, such as your handbook or wiki. The rest of this guide focuses on product onboarding, where a good video can be the difference between a sign-up and an active customer.
What to record for customer onboarding
Start from the first result a customer needs, not from your feature list. Ask: what does someone have to do before the product is useful to them? Each of those steps becomes one video.
For a project management tool, that list might look like this:
- Create your first project (1 minute)
- Invite your team (1 minute)
- Import tasks from a spreadsheet (2 minutes)
- Set up your board view (2 minutes)
- Connect Slack for updates (1 minute)
Five videos, about seven minutes in total. Anything beyond the first result, like advanced reports or admin settings, belongs in your help center, not in onboarding.
One long video or a checklist of short videos?
One long product tour is easy to make and hard to use. Short videos on a checklist take a little more planning and pay off quickly.
| One long video | Checklist of short videos | |
|---|---|---|
| Finding a step | Scrub through the timeline | Click the step you need |
| Progress | Hard to tell where you are | Ticked steps show what is left |
| When the UI changes | Re-record the whole thing | Re-record one short video |
| Seeing where people drop off | One graph for everything | Views per step show the weak spot |
| Best for | A quick overview on your homepage | Getting a new customer set up |
Shorter also tends to get watched. In Wistia’s data on videos hosted with it, videos under a minute average a 52% engagement rate, and engagement declines after the five-minute mark (Wistia).
Onboarding video script outline
Use the same four-part outline for every video on the checklist. It keeps them consistent and quick to record.
- Goal (one sentence)
"In this video you’ll import your tasks from a spreadsheet." The viewer knows right away if this is the video they need.
- Starting point
Say where to begin: "Open your project and click Import in the top right." Show the screen they will see.
- Steps
Do the task once, at normal speed, naming each button as you click it. Use realistic sample data, not "test test 123".
- Result and next step
Show the finished result, then point to the next video: "Your tasks are in. Next, set up your board."
How long should an onboarding video be?
- One task per video, usually one to three minutes.
- A welcome or overview video: under two minutes.
- The whole checklist: aim to keep the total under ten minutes, so a new customer can finish it in one sitting.
- If a single task needs more than five minutes, split it or simplify the task in the product.
How to keep onboarding videos up to date and watched
Out-of-date videos are worse than none, because customers click buttons that are no longer there. A few habits keep them current:
- Keep a list of which video covers which screen. When that screen changes in a release, re-record that one video.
- Avoid saying dates, version numbers or prices out loud. Put them in text, which is easy to edit.
- Keep a transcript for each video, so you can search for the button names that changed.
- Review the full checklist once a quarter by clicking through it as a new user would.
To check whether the videos are working, views alone tell you little. Look at three things for each video on the checklist:
- Who started it. If almost nobody opens step 3, its title or position may be the problem.
- How far they watched. A drop at the same point usually means that part is confusing or too slow.
- Whether they did the task. The real test is the product: did people who watched "Invite your team" invite someone? Compare that with people who did not watch.
Most video hosts give you the first two. The third comes from your own product analytics.
Onboarding video software
Any screen recorder can make the videos. The difference is in how you organize, share and track them. Details below come from each vendor’s pricing page (checked Oct 2026).
| Tool | Good for | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Loom | Quick screen and camera recordings shared by link, with transcripts | Free plan; Business $18 per user/month |
| Guidde | Step-by-step how-to video guides made from screen captures | Free plan; Pro $29 per creator/month or $19 billed yearly |
| Wistia | Hosting videos on your own site, with heatmaps and engagement graphs on paid plans | Free plan; Business $79/month billed annually |
To record the videos themselves, see how to record your screen with audio. If you want viewers to click through a step instead of watching it, an interactive demo can sit on the same checklist.
Turn your recordings into an onboarding page
We are building Clipfold so a recording can do more than one job. Besides a share link, the same recording can become a clickable demo or an onboarding page: a hosted getting-started page with a checklist of your videos and demos. Each recording keeps its transcript, which helps when you need to find what to re-record. An onboarding page costs 30 credits to create. Clipfold is launching soon: join the waitlist to get a founding price.