Where do your sales land?

The problem

When someone buys from your video, TikTok records the second they tapped. Line all those taps up on a timeline and you get a chart. It shows you which parts of the video made people buy and which parts didn’t. Most strategists never look at it.

Below are three charts from three videos for the same kind of product, a skin supplement. The names and numbers are made up, but the shapes are copied from real videos. The shapes are what matter.

The example

Shape 1: the earned ending

Look at the middle. From about 30 seconds to 110 seconds, almost nobody buys. The video is holding people, but it isn’t selling them yet. Then the end lands and the sales pile up.

That means these viewers came in cold. They had never heard of the product. They needed the whole story before they were ready. The ending did the real work. The middle bought time for the ending.

See the two small bumps in the middle? Those are worth a look. Scrub to those seconds and write down the line that was playing. It was probably a proof or a price. A line that sells cold viewers in the middle of a story is a line you keep.

Shape 2: the fast start

This is the opposite. Sales cluster between 4 and 12 seconds. Not at the very start, and not at the end. The opening pitch itself is selling.

These viewers were not cold. They already wanted “an anti-aging thing.” They didn’t need a story. They needed a push. The big claim and the “sells out fast” gave them one, and they bought on the spot.

After 24 seconds the chart goes flat and stays flat. The last 90 seconds are mostly wasted. The video isn’t broken. It’s just too long for the people it pulled in. Two briefs for the next version: end it at about 40 seconds and let the front carry it, or keep the length and write a real ending that earns something.

Shape 3: all the way through

This is the shape you want. There is no dead middle. Sales keep coming the whole way through, with a couple of high points along the way. Two things make this happen.

• It’s a reply to a comment. That pulls in people who already have the question. They are ready before the video starts.
• Every line answers the question. The video is about fakes and dupes. Each sentence is one more reason to buy the real one. There is no stretch of the video that is just setup.

The sales fade after 75 seconds, so the argument is done by then. The next version can end there, or swap the last 15 seconds for an ending that loops back to the start.

What to take from the set

1. Reply-to-comment plus objection handling is your densest format. The questions that keep coming up, “how do I know it’s real,” “is this a scam,” “what about the cheaper one,” are sitting in your comments. Each one is a video. Verdict’s Objections page mines them for you.
2. A long video has to earn its length. If there’s no pile of sales at the end, the length isn’t paying for itself. Check this before you brief another long video.
3. When the sales stop, the video should stop. A fast-start video isn’t a failure. The next version ends where the chart goes flat.
4. Bumps in the middle are lines to keep. Any small rise in a flat middle is a line that sold a cold viewer. Scrub to it, write it down, and use it again.

Do this in Verdict

1. 1
   Open Objections and drop in a comment export for the product, or paste the comments. It groups them into the objections buyers actually have, ranked by how much evidence sits behind each one, and marks the ones none of your scripts answer yet.
2. 2
   Brief one reply video per unanswered objection. That is the all-the-way-through shape, made on purpose: the viewer arrives with the question, and every line answers it.
3. 3
   For a bump in a flat middle, open the video in Video Breakdown to read the line under it, and save that line to the Element Library on its own numbers.
4. 4
   Log the shape in Learnings as the verdict’s note: end-heavy, front-heavy or spread. Lesson 49 shows why the shape you get depends on how long the product has been on TikTok.