How to Build Interactive Demos in 2024 (+Examples)

Software companies have been adopting interactive product demos as part of a shift toward Product-Led Marketing.

And we’re analyzing their performance.

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 roughly 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.

With that data in hand, we put together a guide to help marketers understand what interactive demos are, when to use them, and how to build outstanding demos that set your brand apart.

Interactive demos are a type of no-code sales demo software that gives prospects and customers a hands-on experience — without them ever having to log into your product.

Though they aren’t actually in your product (just in a replica of it), users still get a sense of what your product can do and whether it will serve their use case.

The idea is to arm them with the information and the confidence they need to make a purchase decision and maximize the value of your product.

Because users don’t need access to your product to see it in action, you can use interactive demos across your entire funnel, from first-touch outbound emails to post-demo leave-behinds to upsell and cross-sell campaigns.

Common use cases for interactive demos include:

• ABM campaigns, customized based on persona, industry, or use case
• Partner training to get sellers up to speed on your product and its value props quickly
• Feature announcements to show (not just tell) the ROI
• Review profiles to introduce buyers to your product without them having to speak with sales
• SEO and SEM to get potential customers interested in your product and engaged with your content

You can even combine them into a demo center where prospects and customers can learn about your product on their own time.

The best part? You don’t have to worry about users running into bugs — they’re in a fully controlled environment.

If you have the engineering resources, you could build interactive demos in-house. However, in most cases, using interactive demo software like Navattic is preferable.

It can take six months to a year to build an interactive demo with dedicated engineers. In Navattic, anyone — sales, marketing, CS — can spin up a demo in a few hours.

But picking the software you’ll use is just the first step in building an interactive demo.

You’ll also need to:

• Choose your use case
• Collect internal assets
• Create a storyboard
• Build your demo
• Decide to gate vs ungate
• Iterate on your demo
  

Below we walk you through the build process step by step:

Step 1: Choose your use case

First, decide how and where you’ll use your interactive demo.

According to our 2024 State of the Interactive Product Demo Report, the most popular use case for top-performing demos was website embeds (60.2%). But don’t feel limited by that use case.

Most Navattic customers build 20+ demos across all available use cases. Our data shows that other popular use cases include:

• In-product enablement (10.2%)
• Help articles (8.4%)
• Feature launches (5.4%)

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 better understand the planning and build process.

You can even use that first one as a template, cloning and editing it to support other use cases or personas down the line.

For instance, website interactive demos are usually short (10 - 15 steps) and highly focused on value.

An interactive demo in a help article, by contrast, may take a more “how to” approach with longer steps.

Additional Resources

Read up on best practices for each interactive demo use case:

• Website
• In Product
• Help Center

Step 2: Collect internal assets

Next, gather internal resources for inspiration for your demo build. Great jumping-off points for demo content include:

• Sales calls
• Customer calls
• Webinars
• Frequently used slides
• One-pagers

If those don’t exist, host a brainstorming session with your CS, Sales, or Product team to clarify typical user “a-ha moments” — times when 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

Additional Resource

Follow our step-by-step instructions to turn sales videos into interactive demos.

Step 3: Create a storyboard

Form a demo outline based on the materials you’ve collected. Try to incorporate 2-4 a-ha moments that are unique to your platform.

Run through your outline a few times to confirm the main takeaways from each piece of content match what you plan to show in the demo. Then, share your outline 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.

And there’s another bonus to sharing early: you can start getting buy-in from other departments and foster excitement — before the demo is publicly shared.

Additional Resource

Make your demos even more compelling with tips from a copywriting expert.

Step 4: Build your demo

Now it’s time to put all the pieces together, using your outline as a guide.

Some people use task batching to cut down the time it takes to build their demos, focusing on the theme or inserting all the CTAs they know they want to include before moving on.

Once you’ve got a foundational demo in place, take some time to:

• Play with various theme colors
• Reposition your tooltips to see if you can offer a better UI
• Refine your copy to prompt conversion

Additional Resource

Learn about three strategies our customers use to speed up their interactive demo builds.

Step 5: Decide to gate vs ungate your interactive demo

If your goal is lead generation, gating your interactive demo can get you the information you need to follow up.

But if your goal is user education or brand awareness, you should ungate — that way, you’ll get as many eyeballs on your product as possible.

Our State of the Interactive Product Demo research showed that 72% of top-performing demos did not use a form. On average, these ungated demos had 12% higher completion and 5% higher engagement rates.

Additional Resource

To help you make your decision, read: Should You Gate or Ungate Your Interactive Demo?

Step 6: Iterate on your interactive demo

Your demo won’t be perfect the first time you publish it, and there is always room for improvement.

Sydney Lawson, 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.

Additional Resource

Read our 2024 State of the Interactive Product Demo report to see how your demo metrics stack up.

To give you some inspiration, we’ve pulled several examples of how companies are using interactive demos on their websites.

Lattice

Use case: Navbar CTA, product pages

Lattice, an AI-powered human resources software platform, uses click-through demos to show potential customers what the tool does and how it can drive performance, engagement, alignment, and compensation programs.

On the homepage, users are invited to take a product tour in a CTA within the Platform section of the nav bar.

The page reloads, and visitors are asked to provide some personal information.

Once the form is filled out, Lattice customizes the tour experience based on whether the user is a manager or HR admin, ensuring they see what they will find most interesting and applicable to their day-to-day work.

At the end of the demo, users can run through the alternate experience (Manager or HR Admin) — and Lattice tells them exactly what they’ll see — or book a call with the Lattice sales team.

Explore Lattice’s Tour

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.

Explore the Vitally Academy

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.

Explore the Writer Demo Center

If you want to offer a live demo simulation, Navattic may not be the right choice.

But if you want to provide a highly curated, guided experience — without making users log into your product or talk to sales — Navattic is the interactive product demo software for you.

That’s because Navattic captures HTML/CSS data, so it looks (and feels) like your product without it being your actual product.

Because Navattic is a no-code platform, any member of the GTM team can edit HTML/CSS captures to:

• Fit specific demo requirements
• Blur out unfinished UI
• Remove any messy product data

On top of that, Navattic users can tailor demos specifically for each ICP, guiding prospects straight to a-ha moments that prompt conversion.

And they can use Navattic Analytics to better understand user preferences, demographics, and behavior.

Plus, we offer on-demand demo reviews for all our customers, using data from over 20,000 demos built on our platform to make sure their demos convert.