Interactive Demos Made Easy: A How-To Guide

Interactive demos are now super popular among software companies. They use these demos as a main method to show off their products and reach out to possible buyers. When people can try things out themselves, these detailed guides help highlight the product’s features and show how it can improve things for those who might use it, emphasizing the product’s value proposition effectively.

By offering a personalized demo experience, companies can tailor the demo to the user's specific needs and showcase how the product can address their individual preferences. 

It's quite remarkable that the use of these interactive guides, also called product tours, has shot up by almost 90% since 2022.

Interactive demos are becoming more popular. They give a personal tour of products and really draw in customers. 

These demos make people trust the product by letting users try out features by themselves. They also show how the product can solve problems. In this post, we'll explore this topic further.

What is an Interactive Demo?

An interactive demo lets you test the software by diving in and playing with it. This lets you really see what it can do in actual use. 

Rather than just watching someone else flash it around, you can click and poke around yourself as though you were really using it for your tasks. You get to see how useful the tool is by trying it out directly.

With an interactive demo, you can click buttons and move things around like you're actually using the software. 

For example, if you're trying out a demo for a project organizing tool, you can organize your tasks, choose who does what, and watch how everything is coming along. 

You can do all this through the demo by using our browser extension, which captures all dynamic interactions and animations to create a front-end copy of your product. You can also edit and customize your demo to fit your specific needs.

How To Create Interactive Demos?

Creating a demo is a fantastic way to spotlight your product and catch the eye of interested buyers. Here's how to do it:

Step 1: Defining Your Objective

To start with an interactive demo, you first need to decide what your goal is, which is also called your use case. Think about what you want to achieve and how this demo fits into your larger sales plan. Are you trying to show possible customers what your product does, get more contacts, or make some sales? 

Personalization and tailoring the demo experience can also be a goal, as it allows you to customize the demo for individual business needs and provide options for users to explore and interact with features that align with their requirements.

It's important to optimize your demo library by organizing it based on the use case or step in the funnel to ensure your team has the perfect demo for each deal.

When you know what you want, you can make your demo do just that.

• If you want to teach potential customers, then highlight the cool and helpful features of your product.

• However, if you want to collect contact info, add something that encourages folks to share their details. It could be a big "Sign Up Now" or "Learn More" button at the demo's end.

Understanding why you're creating this demo helps you determine its length and style. A short overview is enough if you're introducing your product quickly. 

But if you want to explain your product in detail and explain why it's great, you might need a longer presentation.

Step 2: Get to know your customer and your product

The next thing you need to do when creating an interactive demo is to understand your customers and your product inside out. This involves:

• Studying who your customers are

• Knowing what problems they have

• Learning all there is about what you're selling

Getting to know your customers and your product is crucial in creating an effective sales pitch. By understanding the problems your customers face, you can tailor your presentation to show how your product can solve those problems. 

This approach not only helps your presentation stand out but also simultaneously caters to various stakeholders, streamlining companies' decision-making processes. 

It can greatly reduce the need for repeated demonstrations to different decision-makers, thus shortening the sales process.

Knowing your audience is key, and so is knowing everything about your product. Learn all its features, what makes it different (that's its special selling points), and why people should be interested (the value it brings). 

When you know this, demonstrating how helpful your product can be becomes easy.

Step 3: Listen to your prospect

Listening well to what the person you're selling to says during sales talks or demo shows is super important. It helps you make a demo that gets it right. If you listen closely to all they say, like their feedback, questions, and worries, you understand what they're looking for. 

Then, you can change your demo to really tackle their main problems, even ones about pricing. 

Paying attention to the people you want to sell to lets you really know what they need and handle any possible worries they have about the cost.

By using this method, you quickly spot any problems or worries they might have from the start. 

You then handle these issues right away in your talk. This helps build trust and proves you're trustworthy. It also makes it more likely for them to become buyers.

Additionally, paying attention to what potential customers think lets you gather important information. Write down any tips or ideas they share. These bits of advice are super valuable for making your demo even better.

Step 4: Tailor your demo to buyers’ pain points

When creating a demo that people can interact with, it's key to focus on the issues your buyers face. Find out their problems or challenges. Then, clearly show them how your product can solve those.

By pointing out these problems in your demo, you show potential buyers how good your item can be for them, which will gain their trust in what you're selling and make them more willing to buy from you.

If you want to do it right, highlight the top benefits of your product that directly help them. Share real-life stories that show how much better their lives could be with what you're offering.

Step 5: Crafting Your Storyboard

Creating a storyboard is key when creating an interactive demo. It's the same as sketching out a map. This map guides your demo, ensuring it tells an engaging tale and highlights how awesome your product is.

When you're planning your storyboard, focus on the key ideas and what you aim to show in your demo. 

Wonder about the story you wish to tell and how you want to showcase your product’s story. What are the highlights and benefits you want to spotlight? Getting answers will help draw a clear roadmap for leading people through the demo.

Step 6: Building the Interactive Elements

When putting together your demo, it's vital to include parts that people can interact with. It makes it more exciting and engaging for those looking at what you have. 

These interactive pieces allow them to really understand and experience your product by trying it out.

There are many tools available that can help with creating these interactive parts. They have user-friendly features such as:

• Drag-and-drop

• Pre-made designs

• Adjustable options

This means you can be fine with coding to create something awesome.

As you work on these parts, focus on the big features of your product that you want everyone to notice. Think about using clickable buttons or letting users move stuff around on their own. They could also follow steps like they would in real-life tasks.

Step 7: Build your demo

After you've decided on your aims, figured out who your buyers are, and gotten a clear picture of your product, and after you've planned how everything will work together in your demo, it's time to combine all those parts.

 This phase is focused on creating everything that comes together nicely to show your potential customers a clear and engaging view of what you have for sale.

Using demo software or tools can help a lot. These programs allow you to make your presentation without having to know a lot about coding or designing. They have simple features such as dragging and dropping items, as well as templates that help you create a cool video demo easily.

When it comes to what's in your demo, remember the plan you made? 

Use pictures, videos, and interactive stuff to show off the awesome things you're selling. You want to make everything easy to understand for people watching. 

Make sure they can easily get what you're talking about.

Step 8: Improving Your Demo

Once you've got your demo going, it's super important to keep getting feedback and checking out the data to improve it. 

When you dig into the analytics, you can discover tons about how folks are interacting with your demo. 

Check out factors like how much they're getting involved, whether they're completing it, and the time they're spending on various sections. This information lets you adjust your demo to make it more appealing and helpful to more people.

By showing a live demo, you can create a more interesting and custom experience for potential customers. This makes it more likely that they will choose our product, leading to better results.

Listening to feedback from people who try your demo is really helpful. You can learn what they enjoyed or didn't, and any advice or issues they had. It can help you make your demo even better for future users.

How to Use SmartCue to Create Interactive Demos? 

An interactive demo tool like SmartCue can be handy if you’re looking to reduce your effort in creating demos. 

SmartCue is an interactive demo tool that helps businesses create interactive demos and product walkthroughs through an intuitive interface and seamless video recording. 

Here are the key features of SmartCue: 

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Step 1: Start with a 14-day trial of SmartCue and log in. 

Step 2: On the SmartCue dashboard, click on ‘Create Showcase’ as shown. You can either capture news through screen recording or upload it manually.  

Step 3: Enter the URL of the domain that you want to record. 

Step 4: Use the SmartCue Chrome extension to record the steps of the software demo. On the screen, you can delete, stop, or pause the recording. The number refers to the number of steps that a user takes to onboard and perform the tour. 

Step 5: In the next step, use editing tools to edit the header, overlay text, and each recording step. 

You can edit the image, zoom, move and blur the images accordingly. Click on Publish and Share to share the link with your team members and stakeholders. 

5 Best Interactive Examples of SmartCue Users

SmartCue caters to the needs of various businesses, irrespective of their industries, such as Edtech, legal, cloud security, HRTech, and more. It also offers demos for various use cases and needs, including email marketing, onboarding, self-serve demos, product tours, and product tutorials.

Read below as we have shared the five best examples of businesses using SmartCue:

1. NexLvL

​NexLvL is an AI-powered, all-in-one CRM platform. It uses SmartCue to provide interactive self-serve demos and product tours. These guided experiences let businesses explore the platform's features, such as automated workflows and chatbot integrations. 

With SmartCue, NexLvL shows how businesses can operate on auto-pilot, ensuring smooth operations and better customer engagement.

2. Strell

​ Strell is an AI-powered platform for optimizing SEO content, integrating SmartCue to offer self-serve demos and product tours. These interactive experiences allow users to understand the depth of their AI-driven SEO tools, showcasing features like real-time data analysis for content optimization. 

The platform provides demos that highlight AI-driven SEO insights, product tours that showcase content optimization features, and onboarding experiences that familiarize users with its capabilities.

3. Bynry

​Bynry, a leader in smart utility software solutions, utilizes SmartCue to provide interactive self-serve demos and product tours. Through SmartCue, potential clients can explore Bynry's innovative SaaS products and experience their capabilities and benefits firsthand.

The platform offers interactive demos that showcase utility management features, comprehensive product tours that highlight AI and analytics capabilities, and seamless onboarding experiences for new users.

4. Kloudle

​Kloudle, a platform focused on automating cloud security, uses SmartCue to offer interactive product tours that guide users through their suite of tools. These tools are specifically designed to minimize human error in cloud security, making them especially valuable for developers. By utilizing SmartCue, Kloudle ensures that users can quickly onboard, understand the platform's capabilities, and adopt its features to maintain a secure cloud infrastructure. 

This approach helps users seamlessly integrate Kloudle's tools into their workflows, enhancing overall cloud security.

5. OceanFrogs 

​OceanFrogs, a top platform for automated data discovery, uses SmartCue to offer interactive product tours. These tours help users explore a range of tools that connect with targeted accounts and decision-makers. With SmartCue, users can quickly understand the platform, onboard easily, and adapt its features, including automation capabilities, to gain valuable insights and signals.

The interactive tours provided by SmartCue showcase the power of OceanFrogs' data discovery platform, making it easier for users to comprehend and utilize its capabilities effectively. This approach ensures a smooth onboarding experience and quick feature adoption.

Best Practices For Creating Interactive Demos

When you create demos that let people interact with your product, it's very important to remember a few key points:

Don’t overwhelm buyers with too many steps

When creating interactive demos, it's key to make it simple for buyers with too many steps. Keep a neat and simple demo that shows off what's special about your product. By sticking to this approach, you can hold the buyers' interest without making them feel too swamped.

Embed demos across different touchpoints.

Think about putting them on pages of your website that get a lot of visits. These could catch the eyes of people stopping by. 

Good spots can be wherever you talk about your product, show it off, or even on blog areas that tie in with what the demo shows. Embedding demos across different touchpoints, such as social media, email updates, and online ads, can help spread the word and attract more potential customers. 

Use voice-overs to make demos more engaging.

When you add voiceovers to demos, they become more friendly and fun for the viewers. With a voice helping people go through the demo, pointing out key parts becomes simple. Plus, it's like telling a story. 

Having a professional voiceover can boost the entire demo, ensuring everyone likes what they see. Having these voiceovers in different languages is a smart move if you want to reach folks from different countries.

Maintain design consistency

Sticking to the same design makes it easier for users to move through all the interactive demos. This means using the same colors, fonts, and layouts, which also helps maintain design consistency on your landing page. 

It helps create a strong brand look and makes it easier for people to use different demos. Keeping things the same makes your brand stand out and helps your demos look good. 

This could catch the eye of people who want to buy what you're offering.

Also Read: Software Demo Presentation Examples

Interactive product demo examples

Many companies use interactive demos to showcase their products. They help people understand what the product is all about and why it's helpful. 

Let's talk about a few businesses that have done a great job with interactive demos:

Drift

Drift demo page 

Drift is a chat marketing tool that shines by using interactive demos to show off what it can do. 

They use interesting voiceovers to help users understand their platform easily, pointing out important parts and perks and explaining what the product is all about. Their matching design style improves the user's experience and keeps their brand looking the same everywhere.

Drift's demos are a great way to demonstrate the quality of their product while grabbing the attention of future users.

ClickUp

ClickUp ensures that all its demos have the same design. This helps people remember the brand and ensures a good experience. 

With these demos, Clickup shows how useful its product can be. It can make work easier for teams of any size. 

Also, you don't need to provide your email address to see the demo. Instead, it encourages you to sign up for a free ClickUp workspace.

Gorgias

Gorgias, a customer help platform, uses hands-on demos to demonstrate its product's full potential, including its ability to automate tasks. 

By using real examples and practical situations, they clearly show how Gorgas can change the way customer support is done. Their demos are easy to use and fun, helping potential clients see the clear advantages of using their platform. 

Conclusion

Interactive demos can really grab attention and highlight your product's features. To nail it, it's helpful to have a plan and follow some important steps.

Adding interactive parts to the demo, keeping a uniform look, and ensuring these demos appear where people spend time online or offline can greatly improve someone's experience.

Looking to create interactive demos on the go? SmartCue is the right solution. The tool enables quick demo creation with a simple Chrome extension and screen capturing. 

Are you wondering if it's for you? Start a 14-day free trial here to test out all the SmartCue features.   

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of using interactive demos?

Interactive demos engage users, effectively showcase product features, and provide hands-on experience. They improve understanding, increase user retention, and drive conversions by offering a memorable and interactive way for users to explore products or services before making a purchase decision.

What are the best tools for creating hands-on demonstrations?

There are many demo software tools available, such as SmartCue. These tools simplify interactive demos. With these tools, marketing and salespeople can quickly build demos without needing much help from their engineering friends. Also, some of these demo software come with AI features and sandbox areas. Here, you can mess around and customize things exactly how you want them.

How is my interactive demo doing well?

Companies can use analytics tools to determine whether their interactive demos are effective. These tools can track various details, including how many people are engaging, how many purchases are made after seeing the demo, and whether the demo helps speed up or improve the sales process. By analyzing this information, companies can learn how well their demos are doing. Then, they can find ways to improve them based on the data.

Can active demos take the place of classic sales presentations?

Interactive demos help a lot in sales, but they don't replace classic sales chats. With usual talks, you chat more with the team. This helps to form a good bond and to talk better. But interactive demos are also cool. They let buyers check the product by themselves and understand why it's awesome. So, these two methods help each other and make selling things easier.

What are the common mistakes to avoid when creating a demo?

When you're putting together a demo, you should avoid a few common mistakes. One needs to make it feel more friendly and tailored to the person watching. Using a lot of short forms or technical words can also be confusing for people. If your demo is interesting, people might quickly gain interest. To really connect with your audience, it's smart to change the demo to fit their needs and tackle their problems. Keeping your words simple can help a lot. Also, if you add things that people can interact with, it can keep them engaged the whole time during the demo.