How to Build Interactive Demos in 2024 [Plus Examples]
Recently, software companies have been adopting interactive product demos as part of a shift toward Product-Led Marketing.
In our recent State of the Interactive Product Demo Report, we found interactive demos have increased in popularity by almost 90% since 2022. Out of a sample size of ~5,000 B2B SaaS websites, 9.26% used some version of a “Product Tour” CTA.
In the same report, we looked through the top 1% of top-performing customer demos to see what they have in common and how they were built.
Below, we’re sharing a step-by-step process of how to create demos just like our best-performing customers, along with a few examples for inspiration.
What is an interactive demo?
Interactive demos provide prospects and customers with a hands-on product walk-through experience throughout the sales and marketing funnel.
They are a type of no-code sales demo software that automates the creation of product demos to showcase relevant features and demonstrate how you solve customer’s pain points.
Interactive product demos can be used across the funnel, from first touch in outbound campaigns to website product demos and post-demo leave-behinds. An interactive product tour gives customers the information they need and the confidence to make a purchase.
6 steps to build a successful interactive demo
You can create interactive demos in-house or with software like Navattic. In most cases, using interactive demo software is preferable – in-house demos can take six months to a year to build with dedicated engineers.
Interactive demo software allows your sales and marketing teams to build demos without needing an extensive engineering lift.
But selecting the software you will use isn’t the only prework involved in building an interactive demo. Here are some other key considerations for building the top-performing interactive demos.
Looking for inspiration? View our interactive demo showcase
Below are the steps to create an interactive demo:
- Step 1: Choose your use case
- Step 2: Collect internal assets
- Step 3: Create a storyboard
- Step 4: Build your demo
- Step 5: Decide to gate vs ungate
- Step 6: Iterate on your demo
Read on for an in-depth walkthrough of each step.
Step 1: Choose your use case
First, decide how and where you’re going to use your interactive demo. As shown below, the most popular use cases for top-performing demos were:
- Website embeds
- In-product enablement
- Help articles
- Feature launches
Don’t feel like you’re limited to one use case — most of our customers build 20 demos on average across all available use cases.
That being said, creating 20 demos at once can be overwhelming. So start with just one and expand from there.
When you finish building your first demo, you’ll have a better sense of the planning and build process. And you might even be able to use it as a template, cloning and editing it to fit other use cases.
Use Cases Tip
Demo length and content may change depending on each use case.
For instance, website interactive demos should be short (10 - 15 steps) and highly focused on value, whereas an interactive demo in a help article may take a more “how to” approach with longer steps.
Additional Resources
Read up on best practices for each interactive demo use case:
Step 2: Collect internal assets
Once you’ve decided on your use case, it’s time to gather internal resources for inspiration for your demo build.
Sales calls, customer calls, and frequently used slides or one-pagers are great jumping-off points for demo content.
If those don’t exist, we recommend hosting a brainstorming session with your CS, Sales, or Product team to clarify typical user “aha moments” — when users realize the value of your product.
Don’t know what your “aha moments” are? Think about the moments' users:
- Understand exactly how the product will help them
- Experience the core value of the product
- Achieve something quickly that would have taken them hours in their old workflow
Internal Assets Tip
If you have an existing demo video or recording, consider summarizing the transcript with AI to form your Storyboard outline (the next step).
Additional Resource
Follow our step-by-step instructions to turn sales videos into interactive demos.
Step 3: Create a storyboard
Review the materials you’ve collected and start to form a demo outline. Your goal should be to incorporate 2-4 “aha moments” that are unique to your platform.
Once you’ve got a rough sketch, run through it yourself a few times to confirm the main takeaways from each piece of content match what you’re conveying in the demo. Then, share it across the org.
Tara Quehl, Product Marketing Director at Demandbase, shared in our customer interview series, “Ask for feedback from other teams who get exposure to prospects and customers. They have insights that you may not.”
Reviewing your demo with others at the Storyboarding stage allows you to make changes much more easily than if you’d already built the demo.
Plus, you can start getting buy-in from other departments and foster excitement even before the demo is publicly shared.
Storyboarding Tips
Some additional tips when storyboarding:
- Keep each demo flow to 8 - 15 steps
- Break features or use cases down it up into different “flows”
- Use a combination of modals and tooltips
- Create a theme to make your demo match your product branding
- Use a checklist to organize multiple flows and give users options
Additional Resource
Make your demos even more compelling with tips from a copywriting expert.
Step 4: Build your demo
Demo automation software, like Navattic, makes this process easy.
With your approved outline in hand, it’s time to start building.
Our customers have found that task batching dramatically decreases the time it takes to create their demos. Some create their entire demo theme in one go or insert all the CTAs they know they want to add before filling in the rest of the demo.
After you’ve got a solid structure, consider:
- Playing with various theme colors
- Repositioning your tooltips for better UI
- Refining your copy to prompt conversion
Building Tip
Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. For a second pair of eyes, reach out to us at support@navattic.com to schedule a demo review.
Additional Resource
Learn about three strategies our customers use to speed up their interactive demo builds.
Step 5: Decide to gate vs ungate
At this point, you need to know whether you’re asking for users’ emails or you’re leaving your demo ungated.
If your goal is lead generation, you may want to gate. But if your goal is education or awareness, you may want to ungate so you get as many eyeballs on your product as possible.
For reference, our State of the Interactive Product Demo research showed that 72% of top-performing demos did not use a form. These ungated demos had 12% higher completion and 5% higher engagement rates on average.
Gating Tip
If you decide to gate, consider waiting to display a form until after step 5.
Our data shows that forms placed later in a demo had a 5% increase in completion rate and a 15% increase in engagement rate.
Additional Resource
To help you make your decision, read: Should You Gate or Ungate Your Interactive Demo?
Step 6: Iterate on your demo
Chances are your demo won’t be 100% perfect the first time you publish it — and there is always room for improvement.
Sydney Lawson, Product Marketing Manager at Athennian, explains that with Navattic Analytics, she’s been able to “tweak pages and tours to make sure that people are finishing the entire tour” and to “easily see where people are dropping off.”
After your demo has been live for a month or two, use Navattic’s native dropoff reporting to see where people get stuck. Go through the demo yourself to try diagnosing the problem and making adjustments accordingly.
Iterating Tips
Use your Analytics Dashboard to see what demos have the highest and lowest engagement and conversion rates.
Find commonalities in the structure, copy, and content in the highest-scoring demos and use that as best practices for future demos.
Additional Resource
Check out our 2024 State of the Interactive Product Demo report to see how your demo metrics stack up.
Interactive product demo examples
To give you some inspiration, we’ve pulled several examples of how companies are using interactive demos on their websites.
Guru
Type: Website CTA
Guru, an AI-powered enterprise intranet, uses click-through demos throughout their website to pique prospects’ interest and boost their engagement.
On the homepage, users are invited to take a product tour in a CTA above the fold and a button in the upper right corner.
The tour opens in full-screen on a new tab, taking users through Guru’s browser extension and chat tool integration, as well as its intranet and wiki capabilities, showing them exactly how Guru can uplevel employee productivity.
After several steps, the Guru marketing team asks if the visitor wants to continue the tour or watch a demo, giving their prospects multiple options for learning about the product.
Vitally
Type: Demo Center
Vitally, an all-in-one customer success platform dedicates an entire section of its website to interactive demos:
Building a library of various demos and adding filters for each core Vitally feature helps users find and walk through their exact use case.
The demos are fairly in-depth, previewing to users just how much value they could get from the tool, thereby increasing the chances they convert.
Writer
Type: Demo Center
Writer, a generative AI writing tool, takes a similar approach to Vitally, using a whole page of their website to promote interactive demos.
As the user scrolls down, they can see multiple interactive demos showcasing various Writer use cases — from drafting press releases to summarizing earnings calls to creating product detail pages.
Users can easily find the interactive demo they’re most interested in with the industry filters the Writer team conveniently provides on the left-hand side of the page.
Writer keeps these demos short and to the point, maximizing the chances prospects get through the entire demo and decide to either run through another one or book a call with the Writer sales team.