How to design How-To videos for Shopify

What is a How-To video?

How-To videos are essentially instructional or informational video presentations that impact knowledge to users about how to perform a specific task or how something works. It's a category of content that has a very high search volume on YouTube and Google considering that many users search "How to X" on the Internet. This insight also provides an opportunity for Shopify stores to create How-To videos that can address a given viewer's question and also take the person to your website. It's also a great way to establish yourself as an authority when it comes to a given product or brand. These videos are usually embedded or published in a blog post or on your store's YouTube and Facebook pages.

Video Design Guidelines

Duration of video: 40 to 60 seconds

Content / Media for the timeline: Slideshow of images or videos that convey "how to X" for a given product. If you have footages that explain how something is done in detail, it would be Plus to have them on the timeline.

Audio: Audio is not a must in these videos, especially if it's a talking head video (a video in which a person speaks to the audience). However, if the video doesn't have a person speaking, you can use stock music that goes well with the theme of the product. Ensure you go for a CC0 license audio if you haven’t purchased a license for the music track. YouTube provides you with a great collection of free audio (that requires no attribution) you can use on your videos.

Text: Text plays an important part in How To videos since they convey the instructions with much better clarity than the audio-visual cues of the video. You could start the video with an intro introducing the product, follow it with lower third or captions that explain the How To the aspect of the video, and end it with an outro asking the user to check out more content on your website.

Brand compliance: Use fonts and colors that are used by your brand. Ensure that the video carries a subtle logo with 70-80% opacity to wrap up the brand compliance efforts.

Video Design Walkthrough

Let's design a How-To video for EVO SS3 Access Gimbal that an electronic appliance store on Shopify is selling. Our intent is to inform the user about the tips & hacks that come in handy while using the EVO SS3 Access Gimbal product.

Step 1: Storyboarding the Video ( ⏰- 10 mins )

The first step would be to come up with a rough storyboard with three sections:

Text: what text overlays you will add to the video

Visuals: what background image or video would be used for demo-ing the product

Intent: what is the purpose of having a given slide or frame in the final video

Here's what we've come up with:

Step 2: Designing the Video on Typito ( ⏰- 15 mins )

Once the storyboard and images/videos for the visuals are ready, you get started with designing the video on Typito!

For this brand, we've chosen to keep the design guidelines intact:

Font: Gilroy Bold and Montserrat Family

Color: Yellow (#FFF446) and Dark Grey (#272421)

Video Format: Widescreen 16:9 (suitable for YouTube and Facebook)

Branding: Logo (top right), All the text elements - Intro, Captions, Outro - follow the brand colors consistently.

Here's a sneak peek into the project on Typito!