3 Tips to Speed Up Interactive Demo Builds
Marketers are more strapped for time than ever. And with fewer resources, building interactive demos for your different use cases or goals can seem overwhelming.
One way to overcome the overwhelm is to streamline your workflow.
Below, we offer three tips to speed up the time it takes to build interactive demos — without sacrificing quality.
Tip #1: Use AI to help build your storyboard
Before we dive into the world of AI, let’s cover what a storyboard is and why it’s important.
What’s a storyboard?
A storyboard serves as an outline for your interactive demo, mapping out what a user sees and does. A thorough storyboard will include written copy for each step, a specific step type (modal, tooltip, etc.), and an optional button or CTA.
Using a storyboard helps you organize your ideas and ensure that the journey you’re taking the user on communicates the true value of your product. Our customer Ryan Moline, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Bombora, says,
“I’d recommend using a storyboard template. That exercise has been incredibly useful to me. It feels like an extra step, but it's so helpful later when you’re thinking about what screens to pull in and what you can say about that experience.
It anchors me on what are we trying to convey and helps me make sure I’m getting that message across succinctly.”
Jason Oakley, the founder of Productive PMM, also advocates for storyboarding as a first step when creating an interactive demo:
“Plan it out first and do your storyboard. Ask yourself, ‘What do I want the steps to be?’ Then write the copy for each step and think about the screenshot you want to capture.”
Another benefit of storyboarding is that it acts as a guardrail, helping you catch mistakes before publishing. Ryan explains,
“There’ve been so many times when I’ve created a demo and realized I’m missing a step or have duplicate steps and need to go back to my original storyboard — it’s my rock.”
If you’re struggling to put pen to paper, try leveraging Jason's Notion Storyboard Template as a starting point.
AI for storyboarding
With so much content to draw from, choosing what to put in an interactive demo and how to position it can be a challenge.
AI can jumpstart your process, sketching out the hard points to hit based on existing product videos or webinars, demo recordings from your sales teams, or even customer onboarding calls.
At Navattic, we’ve used SummarAIze to repurpose audio and video content into demo outlines. Here are the five steps we follow:
- Pick an existing product recording to feed into the tool.
- Add it to SummarAIze (or other summarization solutions).
- Use the outline and summary as the foundation for a storyboard.
- Look for the use cases and features that customers or prospects discuss the most in the outline
- Use quotes from your sales team as inspiration for the copy behind those features.
Once you have an AI storyboard, we recommend reviewing it by your sales or product team to confirm these are the most important features to highlight.
If you’re stuck on the feature copy, let chatGPT give you a hand. Our own internal demo-building team uses AI to bring features to life:
“We use chatGPT or other AI writing tools to rewrite or adjust the tone on copy so it doesn't get too repetitive. Even if you don't use the copy word-for-word, it can help with writer's block.
If you’re working off a marketing video or demo, use the transcription as starter copy for your prompt.”
Tip #2: Batch tasks
Task batching isn’t a new concept, but it’s easy to forget how useful it is — especially in the context of demo creation.
By grouping together similar tasks, you can avoid the trap of multitasking and get more done in a shorter timeframe.
For interactive demos, this could mean:
- Building the theme first: Pull together everything you need from your website, branding guide, old drafts of copy, and product marketing materials.
Then, set your Guide Defaults to match what you'll need for this build. While you have all of this in front of you, consider making different themes for different use cases.
Or, maybe you switch up the format — one demo can present information via tooltips, and another might exclusively use invisible steps to guide the user through the flow.
- Taking multiple captures: If you know you’ll be reusing a certain screen for multiple steps, take multiple captures at once. Doing this is much faster than duplicating steps in the flow builder.
Plus, it allows you to edit a capture without worrying about impacting the work you’ve already done. While you’re at it, use the shortcut Ctrl + C to take captures quicker.
- Knock out steps with CTAs first: These steps will be the main takeaways and prompts for user conversion. Getting these done makes the objective of the demo clearer, helping you fill in content that will naturally guide users in the direction you want them to go.
Tip #3: Consider outside help
The truth is, marketers wear many hats, and sometimes you just don’t have the bandwidth to create interactive demos all on your own.
That’s why we recently partnered with a handful of ex-Navattic customers to create a Navattic demo building consultancy program ready to build your demos for you.
Beyond being a former Navattic power user, each consultant on our roster has years of experience at B2B SaaS companies in various industries, from martech to security to infrastructure to edtech.
Their product marketing and demo building backgrounds enable them to give personalized, strategic guidance for what to highlight in your demo and how to promote it to maximize user engagement and conversion.
Want to learn more? Meet our Navattic demo consultants and reach out to them through their website or LinkedIn.
Want some more tips on creating outstanding interactive demos? Read: