Communicating the value of your product within a sales call is difficult. In a 30 to 60-minute sales call where you have to introduce yourself to your product and set the context first, explaining the product, its actions, and benefits take a backseat. 

These challenges lead to long sales cycles, failed sales deals, and frustration for your sales team. 

An interactive software demo addresses this exact challenge. 

Seeing is believing, and an interactive demo brings your prospects’ ideas to life by showing them what the product does instead of claiming it does a lot! 

An interactive product demo is a tangible way to excite the prospects to deliver what they ask, leading to shorter sales cycles and productive sales teams. 

This article will discuss interactive software demos - what they are, why they matter, and, most importantly, how to create one. 

What is an Interactive Software Demo? 

An interactive demo is a product walk-through to help your prospects or customers understand how it solves their problems. 

Not so long ago, most B2B sales reps would use pre-recorded sales demos, product decks, or product explainer videos to showcase product features during sales calls. These resources wouldn’t do justice as they miss a significant factor - addressing the prospect’s pain points. 

An interactive software demo allows the prospects an upper hand in exploring a product at their own pace, answers their questions, and makes them feel heard. 

New-age B2B prospects don’t prefer sales reps to give them all the information. They expect to navigate through different product features, assess whether they would match their requirements, and then have productive conversations with sales reps. 

Types of Interactive Software Demos 

There are broadly four different types of interactive product demos: 

HTML interactive demos 

HTML interactive software demos are self-guided overviews that walk customers through the features and functionalities of a product, allowing them to experience its benefits firsthand. 

Every interactive product demo software has a built-in HTML editor that helps you capture HTML captures of your desired product features, lets you make edits within the screenshots to add a sequence, edit texts, add images and charts, and remove existing image content with relevant use cases. 

Here’s an example demo of HubSpot. Watch how this demo takes you through the HubSpot CRM and explains the different capabilities of Rivia.AI.

Live interactive demos (Also known as playground demos)

A live interactive demo is a type of demo where there is no specific sequence or flow to it. Users can explore a live demo per their requirements by clicking across different demo parts. 

Compared to an HTML demo, where you have to follow a particular flow, playground software demos are much more life-like and provide the users with significant opportunities to discover the product's benefits for their preferred use cases. 

To add more interactive elements to a live demo, edit it with an HTML Editor, to edit existing texts, add graphs and charts, and so on. 

Screenshot interactive demos 

A simple interactive software demo created by compiling a bunch of product screenshots. To make it engaging, add modals, edit existing content, and add other personalization elements like images, fonts, brand logos, annotations, etc. 

Video interactive demos 

A video software demo is created by compiling multiple product videos and tours. Much like screenshot demos, you can personalize your video interactive demos with the editing tooltips available in your interactive demo platform. 

To sum it up 👇

Why do you Need an Interactive Software Demo? 

Interactive software demos let your prospects gain hands-on experience understanding the product and its benefits. More clarity about the product means shorter sales cycles, higher user adoption rate, and winning more credibility. 

Here are the key reasons why using an interactive product demo is a must in 2024: 

Boost your product sign-up rate 

A common mistake most SaaS brands make is adding product explainer videos to their book a demo pages. Believe it or not, this is where you are repelling your potential customers. 

A customer reaches your demo page after exploring product pages, feature pages, and other resources on your website. Product understanding is The final step between the customer and the “Sign-up” button. At this stage, the customer has just one question - “will this self-guided demo platform match my needs?” 

Instead of the same old pre-recorded product videos, consider adding an interactive live demo that allows the customers to explore the product independently, helping them understand its capabilities in resolving the problems you are struggling with. 

Alex continues, “Interactive demos help at every conversion funnel stage, and they turn a bullet point list of features into something more tangible.” 

Watch how Bigin does this 👇

Build the foundation of product-led growth 

It is high time to ditch a sales-led model and switch to product-led growth, where your product does all the talking, takes your prospects through different stages of buyer journey, and finally converts them into paid customers. 

Sounds interesting? 

The first rule of product-led growth is to adopt the “show, don’t tell” framework. If you still use decks and pre-recorded product demos, catching the prospects’ attention will be challenging. Because these resources either tell too little or too much about your product. 

Product-led growth requires a solid foundation where you balance your product’s capabilities and the prospect’s pain points. An interactive demo becomes a bridge between these two points. 

Attract high-intent leads 

When a prospect signs up for a free trial or books a demo with your sales team after going through your interactive software demo, it shows that they are genuinely interested in your product. 

With an interactive product demo, you can fill your lead pipeline with high-intent prospects and stop attracting low-intent leads who are unsure about your product and hold very few possibilities of getting converted into a paid customer. 

To solidify your lead generation process, consider gating your interactive demos. Alex adds, “Make sure to capture these high-intent visitors to keep them in the loop. Otherwise, a high-intent prospect might lose track of you when they do their due diligence and check out other competitors.” 

Elements of an Interactive Software Demo 

Creating an interactive software demo just requires three steps: 

• Capture  
• Edit 
• Publish 

Here’s a quick tutorial to create an interactive demo in under 1 minute👇

But that’s not all! 

To perfect your interactive software demo, make sure to answer the following questions: 

Does it match your potential users’ intent? 

The interactive software demo you create must match the potential user’s intent. For example, if you are developing an interactive Google Analytics (GA) demo, your potential users can be paid marketers and SEO professionals. 

But both user groups are interested in different features of Google Analytics. 

While SEO professionals keep track of user traffic, views, bounce rates, and similar search and content metrics, paid marketers will monitor Google Ads and AdSense revenue. 

Accordingly, the interactive software demos for both these groups will also differ as the use cases are entirely different.

Is it saying too little or too much about your product? 

Let’s take the same example above. Imagine yourself in the shoes of an SEO professional. 

Will they be interested in learning about all GA features at one go? Like - user traffic, views, bounce rates, users per session, landing page views, and so on? 

Or will they just want to know about user traffic only, which is the most common metric? 

No, and no. 

You need to strike a balance here and add just the right features that an SEO professional might be interested in without overwhelming them. 

Does it tell a story? 

Before creating an interactive product demo, create a storyboard. This storyboard should paint a rough picture of the key concerns of the prospects, your solutions, and the next steps. Use this storyboard as inspiration to create the interactive demo. That way, you’ll not get distracted in the process. 

An interactive demo storyboard should look something like this 👇

How to choose an Interactive Demo Software? 

One of the key interactive demo mistakes is not assessing the interactive demo platform enough before making a purchase decision. 

This mistake results in lousy demos that hardly convert! 

If you are all set to buy your first SaaS demo platform, here are the things you must note: 

• The interactive demo software should be able to fulfill use cases of all the customer-facing teams and not just sales or marketing
• The interactive demo builder should be easy to use. That way, everyone from your product marketing and sales teams can use it at their own pace without seeking assistance from the technical team 
• The software must integrate with your existing workplace tech stack like Slack, Notion, Teams, HubSpot, etc. Avoid scenarios where your team has to switch between multiple applications to create a demo, it reduces their productivity and the quality of their work 
• The interactive software demo solution must have built-in analytics to track critical interactive demo metrics like - unique views, demo completion rate, average time spent on your demo, and so on

• The SaaS product demo platform must have a strong HTML editor to personalize the demos for different use cases and different user segments

Ready to Create your First Interactive Product Demo? 

Are you all set to select your first interactive software demo solution? 

We hope that you have sufficient resources and interactive product demo examples to understand how interactive product demos work and how they are the key drivers behind your long-term growth. 

So, what’s the next step? 

It is time to explore one of the best interactive product demo solutions to create personalized software demos for your website and product - Rivia.ai. 

Book your demo to get started!

FAQs 

What is an interactive app demo? 

An interactive app demo is a self-guided demo of an application that users can explore at their own pace and achieve hands-on experience. 

Which is the best interactive demo platform? 

Of all the interactive demo platforms, we suggest Rivia.ai as the best for its interactive features and affordable pricing. 

What is an interactive demo example? 

Check Rivia’s demo gallery to explore more interactive product demo examples.