Best Practices for Building Product Demos

Interactive demos are a great wya to show off your product's capabilities and qualify leads right from your marketing site. Whether you have made a demo before or not, it's always a good idea to keep iterating on your demo. This way your demo stays up to date with your products improvements and appeals to your target use case.

In this blog post we will explore 5 best practices for building interactive demos, how to get started and what tools can you achieve a superior demo experience.

5 Best Practices for Building Interactive Demos

No matter what tool you use, best practices for creating great demos are universal!

1. Keep your demo concise. It can be tempting to cram every feature into your demo. Select a few key capabilities and summarize their value in your demo.

2. Tell and story and speak to a use case. Again tell a story that speaks to the persona and use case of someone using your tool. For example, when speaking to a product marketer you wouldn’t say “interactive demos show off your product’s features” you would say “interactive demos qualify leads from your marketing site.”

3. Add multiple media elements. Your demo should always include screen grabs of your UI. But outstanding demos include voiceovers, markups, custom branding and multiple export options.

4. Pressure test your demo. Before publishing a demo to your marketing site, have others in your test and give feedback on the demo you created.

5. Iterate on your demo. Your first demo isn't going to be perfect or speak to every use case you serve. Edit and update your demo as your product changes or features release. Or create multiple demos for all your use cases.

6 Steps to Create an Interactive Demo

Step 1: Identify your ideal customer profile (ICP)

The first step in creating an interactive demo is to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP). Who are you trying to reach with your demo? What are their needs and pain points? Once you understand your ICP, you can tailor your demo to their specific interests and concerns.

Step 2: Understand the buyer journey

The buyer journey is the process that potential customers go through when making a purchase decision. It typically includes three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. When creating an interactive demo, it's important to understand the buyer journey and where your demo fits in.

For example, if your demo is targeting prospects who are in the awareness stage, you may want to focus on educating them about your product and its benefits. If your demo is targeting prospects who are in the consideration stage, you may want to focus on demonstrating how your product can solve their specific problems.

Step 3: Create an empathy map

An empathy map is a tool that can help you to better understand your ICP and their needs. It consists of four quadrants:

• What does your ICP think and feel?

• What does your ICP say and do?

• What does your ICP see?

• What does your ICP hear?

Once you have created an empathy map, you can use it to inform the content and structure of your interactive demo.

Step 4: Segment for effective personalization

Once you have a good understanding of your ICP, you can segment them into different groups based on their needs, pain points, and other factors. This will allow you to create more personalized and effective interactive demos.

For example, you may want to create different demos for different industries, company sizes, or job titles.

Step 5: Choose the right interactive demo software

There are a number of different interactive demo software solutions available. When choosing one, it's important to consider your needs and budget. Some factors to consider include:

• Features: What features do you need in an interactive demo software solution? Some common features include screen recording, video editing, and annotation tools.

• Ease of use: How easy is the software to use? You want to choose a software solution that is easy to learn and use, so that you can focus on creating great demos, not learning how to use the software.

• Pricing: How much does the software cost? There are a variety of pricing options available, so be sure to choose one that fits your budget.

Step 6: Measure the results

Once you have created and launched your interactive demo, it's important to measure its results. This will help you to determine how effective your demo is and identify areas for improvement.

Some metrics that you may want to track include:

• Number of views: How many people have viewed your demo?

• Engagement rate: How long do people spend viewing your demo?

• Conversion rate: How many people who have viewed your demo have converted into customers?

Picking a Demo Tool

Before picking a demo tool, it's important to have an understanding of what you want your demo to include. If you need voiceovers to explain your features or the ability to upload a video step to provide more content, then look for a tool that does this.

Most demo tools will have customization features, but look for a tool that provides you with creative freedom to build a demo that represents your product.

Driveway is a demo tool that gives you creative freedom to show off your product and a variety of multimedia elements. With Driveway you can add voiceovers o steps, markup / blur screenshots, add custom branding, upload a video step and export in many different formats -including video!

Driveway demos are also super easy to make, as our chrome extension software captures your clicks and turn them into step-by-step screenshot guides. Here's what a Driveway guide would look like on your website or blog.