Show the ugly number

On the Castfy homepage there's a table of real recordings and how much shorter they got after editing.

Most rows look great. An onboarding flow went from 396 seconds of raw recording to an 8-second video. A pricing walkthrough went from 244 seconds to 6.

And then there's this one: a short settings demo, 25.3 seconds raw, 23.4 seconds finished. Barely anything cut.

I kept it on purpose.

The best day isn't the real day

That last demo had almost no dead time in it, so almost nothing came out. That's the tool working correctly. But if I only showed the 48x result, I'd be showing you my best day and letting you assume it's every day.

You'd find out the truth the first time you used it. Then you'd stop trusting everything else I said.

Honest numbers sell better than big ones

When a page shows only perfect results, I assume they were picked. When it shows the spread, including the weak one, I believe the strong ones more.

One ugly row buys credibility for every good row.

The rule I use

If a number is real and relevant, it goes on the page, even when it doesn't flatter me. If I'd be embarrassed for a user to discover it later, it goes on the page first.

It's a small thing. But small products live on trust, and trust is cheap to keep and expensive to win back.