There’s a time and a place for explainer videos. There’s a time and a place for demos.
There’s also a time and a place for interactive demos.
An interactive demo of your product (or feature) is designed to help buyers quickly connect their pain points to the value your solution provides. Our approach to these experiences makes it easy to build using product screenshots and videos rather than code.
Code-based experiences, on the other hand, are great for building demo environments, which are great for the bottom half of the funnel, but they don't work well for the top half of the funnel where buyers spend most of their time reviewing your website (even though you only get them for about 1 minute), social networks and reviews. During this time, they are much more impatient and critical.
Hence why our interactive demos are media-based — because it’s better for your buyer.
A media-based product demo ensures that you (the seller) are maximizing the experience for your buyers and leaving nothing to chance. It’s so that buyers can explore your platform on any device as well as see its full potential (we call this the “how”).
There’s no room for error at the top-half of the funnel. The experience needs to be perfect. It shouldn’t feel real, it should feel right.
1. Show how your product works
You want to show your buyers what a full product journey looks like ... not just pieces of it.
A cloned demo environment is great for highlighting how your product feels, but it creates a lot of gaps in the buyer’s experience by leaving out how your product actually works.
As you guide buyers from screen to screen, video capture is the perfect tool to flaunt the beauty of your product as data loads, graphs move, and actions like drag and drop take place during the interactive demo.
Adding video is one way to bring your demo to life.
- Drag and drop
- Typing and mouse movement
- Graphs and charts
- Data loading
- Animations
- Automations
- Multiple clicks
- Anything that requires JavaScript
Show drag and drop and loaders/spinners
Show data loading and charts & graphs animating
Show file uploads, drop downs, and loaders/spinners
2. Maximize your reach with a perfect, consistent experience no matter the device or browser size
Marketers know how powerful a great mobile experience can be, but demonstrating software on smaller screens can be challenging. Media-based demos allow you to size down seamlessly, and utilize effects like zooming in to deliver exceptional mobile experiences for buyers on the go. Don’t leave your mobile visitors stuck with unpredictable demos.
Optimize for mobile traffic
Tourial experiences can be built to match your buyer’s mobile device, but code-based demo environments don’t scale down for your buyer
Optimize for inconsistent browser sizes
Some desktop devices are huge (i.e. extended monitors) while others are smaller like laptops. Don’t let the uncertainty of a browser’s size dictate whether or not your buyers are going to have a sub-optimal experience.
Media-based demos (those built with screenshots and videos) ensure your buyers have consistent experiences regardless of the browser size they’re using.
3. Code gives a false sense of realism
This is a big one. Copying the frontend of your product retains its visual styling (i.e. hover states), but this makes visitors think everything is clickable when in fact, it isn’t. When a user thinks something is clickable but it’s not, it creates what is called an “anti-pattern” in UX. Anti-patterns create frustrating experiences because reality contradicts their expectations.
As for scrolling, this is likely the first time your buyer is interacting with your product so it’s best to control the experience to ensure they never feel “lost” in your product. Screenshots give you that control, so you can keep the focus on the sections and flows that matter most. With less distractions, buyers can stay engaged in your story and that’s what drives conversions.
Media-based Interactive Demos are guided, controlled, and users can’t get lost
Elements in Code-based demo environments seem clickable, but aren’t
4. Promote new products & features before they’re live
Let’s say you’re launching a new product, and you want to promote it before the release. Easy. You can upload high fidelity wireframes from your design tools (i.e. Figma or InVision) and build ineractive demos that way. A code-based approach? If the product isn’t live. The code isn’t live. No can do.
When you’re building self-serve product demo, nothing matters more than the buyer experience. Our media-based strategy protects that experience at all costs and puts you in full control of your buyer’s first impression.
Because it’s all about the buyer.