How to create Interactive Demos [Tips & Techniques]

This blog discusses the best tips and techniques for creating interactive demos. It highlights various steps on how to create one, provides practical tips and showcases best examples of organizations using interactive demos

What is an interactive demo?

An interactive demo is a dynamic, self-guided software walkthrough that allows prospects to experience the product firsthand. Imagine it as a test drive for a car before making a purchase - you get to see the product in action and understand its functionalities.

However, unlike trials, interactive demos provide a guided experience, making it easier for prospects to explore the product's value quickly. Unlike traditional static demos or one-way product demo videos, interactive demos offer personalized, immersive experiences that enhance your product's appeal and understanding.

With the help of interactive demos you understand how a product works just like a real one. Such an experience can ultimately help sales and marketing teams with increased engagement, adoption, and sales. According to a TrustRadius report, most B2B buyers want to take the self-serve path on a buyer's journey, thus eliminating the “contact seller” option. That’s a major learning here and speaks to the need of providing avenues for self-conducted research.

Most progressive interactive demos consist of multiple capabilities that are constantly evolving. To cater for the needs of a modern buyer, it’s vital to understand the ability of interactive demos and how it can help you engage with your prospects better. With an interactive demo environment you can,

1. Create immersive virtual simulations hosted on cloud

2. Build personalised demos for specific use cases, personal or even specific individual Develop narrative using text/audio/video to present value even in the unassisted use cases

3. Gamify for higher engagement and improve lead velocity

4. Easily share and embed into your outreach materials

Read: Why companies are looking beyond video product demos

6 Steps to create interactive demos:

Step 1: Identify your Ideal Customer Profile

Before creating interactive demos, you need to identify your audience and understand their needs, goals, and pain points. This will help you tailor your demo to their specific situation and make it more engaging.

Step 2: Understand the buyer journey

As you figure out your personas, it’s crucial to map out their journey right from acquisition to conversion. Create a journey map, find out the touchpoints that are more effective for users who reached the AHA moments and for users who converted. This will give your product demos the arsenal to be more effective! A journey map will let you,

• Find the top AHA moments for each persona

• Figure out what touchpoints the persona goes through and has friction

• Learn how effective your value proposition is

Read: Demos are crucial to every step of customer journey

Step 3: Create an empathy map

Once you have the buyer journey ready, create an empathy map, outlining specific needs, concerns or fears along the buying journey. That is the backbone of your storytelling and allows you to craft the narrative. Now you can make sure the information you share at each stage of the journey is relevant and engaging. Furthermore, by mapping out and phasing your story across several demos, you can avoid overwhelming your audience with too much information too early, which oftentimes can have a detrimental effect.

Step 4: Segment for effective personalization

Segment your users into the personas you are targeting and create a specific demo per persona (e.g. CFO might need a different argument to buy into your offering than the sponsor or daily user). Instead of focusing on features, highlight how your product can solve the problem of your targeted persona. Personalising the demo based on segmentation will address each of the stakeholders’ needs and concerns, speeding up the sales process.

Step 5: Choose the right interactive demo software

To help you create interactive demos, it's crucial to find the right software that lets you develop these demos. You will always find a bunch of tools out there but not all can cater for your needs. So before you move ahead, find out the things that you need and see if the tool matches them well. An interactive demo software should include

• Easy personalization

• Intuitive interface (no code preferable)

• Easy to scale

• Integrates with your tools

• Enterprise focused and secure

• Advanced analytics and reporting

Step 6: Measure the results

Measure the results of your interactive demo to see how effective it is. Use analytics to track engagement, conversion rates, and other metrics to see what is working and what needs improvement. Keep experimenting till you find out what works.

How to create interactive demo with Demoboost?

Here are the general steps to create interactive demos using Demoboost,

1. Plan: Before you begin creating the demo, figure out where in the buyer's journey the demo would fit it. Determine whether it's on your website (for visitors), in-app (for customers/onboarding) or whether it's a follow up demo to shorten the sales cycle. Understanding the demo cycle methodology plays a crucial role in planning your creation process.

2. Build the storyboard: Once you have a plan ready, you can then determine what use cases and benefits of the product you want to showcase. Create a storyboard or script to guide the creation process. Figure out your narrative for the demo. The story telling through a demo is like peeling onion- you start from very generic problem-solution statements, bringing your prospect closer to specific benefits per persona and finally describing the features that drive those benefits. With Demoboost you can also take our team's help to create the desired product demos for you.

3. Capture Screens: As you create a storyboard, capturing the screens becomes seamless. With our intuitive one click option, you can easily clone your product in our secure cloud environment and then build your best story to sell. At Demoboost, security comes first so you don’t have to worry about the data.

4. Customize: One of the most effective ways to make the demo engaging and informative is the ability to customize. Add interactive elements such as text bubbles, videos, images, and weblinks to allow users to interact with the demo and learn about the product. Additionally, use your narrative through audio and video to enhance the demo. This adds a more engaging layer and allows you to guide the leads according through the story.

5. Test and refine: Once you have created the interactive demo, test it thoroughly to ensure that it works as expected. Refine the design and content based on user feedback to create the most effective and engaging demo possible.

6. Publish and share: Finally, publish the interactive demo and share it with your target audience. Demoboost allows you to embed the demo on your web page or a standalone sharable link. A shareable link makes it easy for you to reach your prospects faster and help them sail through the buyer's journey.

7. Analyze and enhance: Track your users' interaction with the product demo using built-in insights. Gather feedback from customers/users and keep improving your product demos for enhanced experience.

7 ways to showcase your interactive demos with examples

Creating interactive demos is probably the first step. However, what's also important is how you can deliver them to your buyer. It should be at the buyers’ fingertips wherever they are researching, reading or gaining information about your product. Let’s deep dive into the best possible ways where you can add these interactive demos and make it more effective.

1. Place it on Homepage:

Your product itself is the best starting where the buyers first land. One of the most effective ways to showcase an interactive demo is by adding it to the homepage of your website. This will make it visible to all visitors and increase the chances of engagement and conversion.

Here’s how Octiv Fitness did it, by adding it right at the Hero section of their website.

2. Embed in blogs/communities:

Embedding interactive demos in blogs and communities can be a powerful way to showcase the value of your product to your target audience. Using Demoboost you can easily add them to areas where your audience is being most active.

Here’s how Atlassian has used interactive demos on their community to bridge the gap between product and marketing.

3. Add them in live chat:

Live chat can be an effective way to engage with prospects and answer their questions in real-time. Embedding an interactive demo in the live chat can help to showcase the value of the product instantly, thus helping leads to make decisions faster.

Here’s how Dooly uses it in their chat, explaining their features with an interactive demo for better understanding of the product.

4. Create a Product Demo Library:

Creating the library can be a valuable asset for organizations. It can help to improve the customer experience, increase conversion rates, reduce support costs, provide a competitive advantage, and provide a scalable way to provide customers with information about your product.

Here’s how Limitless uses the interactive demos to educate the users for their specific needs.

5. Dedicated demos for use case:

Adding interactive demos for specific use cases makes it much easier for the user to resonate with your product. This makes your demo more personalised to users' needs and increases engagement. You can also add these demo’s across the website on footer, pop-ups and even webinars.

Here’s how Celonis uses interactive demos for its use cases.

6. Include in email outreach campaigns: 

Adding interactive demos in email campaigns can be one of the most effective ways to allow people to experience your product. The targeted audience can know what your product offers using a simulated interface of your product just at a click of a button. You can use the product demos for multiple use cases in an email like newsletters, product update emails, cold outreach emails and more. 

7. Add in sales calls:

Sales teams can use interactive demos in their presentations to showcase the key features and benefits of the product. This can result in better engagement, higher recall for the prospect, leading to higher conversion rates.

👉 Check out our Interactive product demo examples to gain more valuable insights and inspiration.

That's All Folks!

Interactive product demos can be an incredibly effective tool for engaging with potential customers and showcasing the value of your product, even before the prospects meet your sales rep. By following the steps outlined in this blog, you can create interactive demos that boost conversion rates and streamline your sales cycles. So why not start creating product demos today and see the benefits for yourself!

🚀 Create your first interactive demo now! Get in touch.