Real estate video that converts: a 90-second edit that 3x'd listing views
We A/B tested 9 video edits on the same Marrakech villa. The 90-second version outperformed the 3-minute cut by 3x. Here's the structure, the music, and what we cut.
We were hired to produce a hero video for a 6-bedroom Marrakech villa listed at 18M MAD. The agency wanted a 3-minute cinematic cut. We suggested A/B testing. After 9 edits, 6 weeks of data, and 41,000 listing views, the 90-second cut won by a margin we did not predict. Here is the structure, the music license, and the exact frame that drove the conversion.
The villa was a difficult shoot — north-facing garden, no direct sun, white walls that blow out at noon. The agency wanted a luxury cinematic narrative: drone arrival, slow dolly, sunset pool, owner interview. We delivered that, plus 8 other cuts. Each one was 30 seconds shorter than the last, ending with a 90-second version we almost didn't include. The data told a different story.
The 9 edits we tested
Edit 1 was the 3-minute cinematic cut. Edits 2-5 were 2-minute, 90-second, 60-second, and 30-second versions of the same footage. Edits 6-9 were 60-second and 90-second versions with different music and different opening shots. We ran them sequentially on the same listing, 4 days per edit, and tracked listing views, viewing requests, and time-on-page. The 90-second version (Edit 3) outperformed the 3-minute cut by 3x on viewing requests.
- 01Edit 1: 3:00 — cinematic, drone arrival, owner interview
- 02Edit 2: 2:00 — cinematic, no interview
- 03Edit 3: 1:30 — fast cuts, no drone, music-driven (WINNER)
- 04Edit 4: 1:00 — fast cuts, no drone
- 05Edit 5: 0:30 — single drone shot + cut to interior
- 06Edits 6-9: 0:60 and 1:30 variations of Edit 3 with different music
The 90-second structure
The winning cut followed a 5-beat structure: 0:00-0:08 hero wide establishing the property, 0:08-0:30 fast interior tour (12 cuts, 1.8s average), 0:30-0:50 lifestyle shots (pool, garden, dinner table), 0:50-1:10 the hook (the one frame that made the agent cry — a low-angle dolly down the cedar-lined corridor), 1:10-1:30 the ask (price, contact, call to action). The music was a 90-second Artlist license, 118 BPM, melancholic piano with a soft beat drop at 0:50.
“The single frame that drove the conversion was a 2-second low-angle dolly. Everything else was scaffolding.”
What we cut
We cut the drone arrival. We cut the owner interview. We cut the sunset pool shot. We cut the slow dolly. We cut any frame longer than 2.5 seconds. The 90-second cut is, by design, exhausting. The viewer is supposed to feel like they have seen the whole property, and they have — but at a tempo that respects their time. The lesson we took from this A/B test is now baked into every real estate video we produce: cut faster than feels right.
We have run this A/B test on 4 more listings since. The 90-second version has won every time, by a margin of 1.8x to 3.4x on viewing requests. The data is unambiguous — buyers in the Marrakech market do not want a 3-minute cinematic. They want to know if the property is worth a viewing, in under 2 minutes. If you are quoting a real estate video, ask the agency what the target viewing-request rate is, and quote the length of the video from there.
