How to leverage interactive demos for customer success
SaaS companies are always rolling out new features with at least one major release planned for every couple of months. Add to this the various mergers and acquisitions, and the result is complex workflows, patchy integrations, and a whole lot of feature debt.
No wonder so many users churn out stating steep learning curves and difficult-to-use software. Even market leaders aren’t immune to this. Over 2000 reviews on G2 speak about Salesforce's steep learning curve as a drawback. Similarly, 950+ reviews mention ClickUp's learning curve, and around 700 call it non-intuitive.
At the same time, a lot more users say they subscribe to both Salesforce and ClickUp because they’re ‘feature-rich.’ This presents a classic trade-off: how can companies add features without sacrificing user experience? The answer lies in effective product education.
And here’s where interactive demos come into play. Whether you're onboarding new users or introducing new features to existing customers, bite-sized interactive walkthroughs are a great way to guide users through your product and help them figure out how things work.
Let’s look at how you can incorporate interactive demos in your customer success playbook.
Personalize the demo experience
The first step is understanding what your customers actually need. One way to do this is by mapping demos to key moments in your customer lifecycle journey. Is the demo part of your new user onboarding sequence or feature activation campaign? Or is the demo part of your knowledge base to help with troubleshooting issues?
By targeting ‘immediate’ requirements, you give customers what they need — holding on to their interest until they reach the AHA moment. So they realize the value of your solution or feature.
Another way to personalize the demo experience is audience segmentation, either based on Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) or user activity, so you’re relevant. For example, let’s say you’re a subscription billing platform that has two buyer personas — finance teams and sales teams.
Instead of sharing a generic demo with each of them, you can create custom demos addressing their unique pain points. Like financial reporting for finance teams, and contract management for sales teams.
Drive engagement with interactive elements
One of the biggest benefits to incorporating interactive demos (as opposed to videos), is how they break the monotony of passive ‘viewing’. Here are some interactive elements that you can use:
Hotspots to show viewers where to click to go to the next step
Tooltips to add extra context to features and workflows
Checklists to help users track their progress
Some interactive demo software also supports micro-animations like zooming and panning which are great ways to draw your audience’s focus to a particular section of your UI.
Another option to make the demo experience interactive is using branched narratives. Instead of a linear presentation, you use multiple ‘decision points’ that lead to different narration paths. This allows viewers to choose the aspects of the product most relevant to them — ensuring a meaningful experience.
Group demos into collections for easy access
We have to acknowledge that human attention spans are declining — which makes long demos a definite no. So how do you demo longer features? By creating bite-sized tours with a maximum of five to six steps, and adding them to a collection or playlist.
Explore how demo playlists work in Layerpath
With well-defined collections, users can quickly search and find specific demos based on their needs. Plus, shorter, focused demos are less likely to cause viewer fatigue — as your audience doesn’t have to sit through irrelevant information.
One example of this is DigitalOcean, which has a library of short interactive demos for different modules. Plus, at the end of each demo, you’re asked if you want to talk to an expert or view the next demo in the collection. A great way to hold the attention of your viewers (and qualify them), without making the interaction seem forced.
The final CTA on DigitalOcean’s demos; Source: DigitalOcean
Back your demo strategy with data
With interactive demos, you’re sitting on a goldmine of actionable data on your audience's behavior. Metrics like demo completion rates, drop-off points, and time spent on different sections reveal where viewers lose interest.
Not only that, if many viewers struggle at a specific point within the workflow, it might indicate a deeper issue: a usability problem within the actual product itself, as the demo often mirrors the product's UI.
We also recommend A/B testing your demos using different interactive elements and CTAs. Do your users prefer booking a demo, or exploring another interactive demo? Or which features should you add to your branched demos? A/B testing can help you design a demo experience based on audience feedback rather than gut feelings and hypotheses.
Tip: If you’re just starting with interactive demos, you can even A/B test interactive demos against video demos to see which experience your user base prefers. Or like Jellyfish (the engineering intelligence platform), you can combine both by adding videos as ‘extra context’ to interactive demos. This way you can cater to different user preferences and maximize engagement.
Jellyfish’s interactive demo that includes videos for extra context; Source: Jellyfish
Leverage visuals and voiceovers to add context
An easy tip to make your interactive demos both accessible and engaging is using voiceovers. And with many interactive demo tools providing synthetic voiceover options in multiple voices and languages, you can do this in minutes.
Simply add your script — some tools like Layerpath even generate the script using your video recording and description — and let AI add voice and translate it to different languages.
Explore how AI voiceovers work in Layerpath
Similarly, ensure that you bring your brand identity into your interactive demos. Use your brand's signature colors, fonts, and tone of voice throughout the demo. This can both improve brand recognition and provide a cohesive experience.
Perfect demo flow and navigation
Just as important as your visuals or interactive elements are the content flow and navigation options. Provide users control over the experience with options like "Skip," "Pause," "Replay," and "Jump to Sections” so they don’t feel locked into the demo.
You can also use navigation analytics to gauge user behavior. For example, if many users jump to a specific feature segment, then it’s of high interest to them. So placing your lead collection form at or near this point can get more eyes on it and increase lead capture rates.
Two other tips for perfecting your demo flow are:
Design a demo journey that organically leads to the AHA moment, so users perceive the value of your product.
End with two call-to-actions — one primary, and one secondary — so they have multiple options and don’t feel restricted.
Focus on real customer experiences
Involve Customer Experience (CX) teams to understand which features customers love and which workflows they find challenging. This helps you identify features that trigger customer "AHA!" moments — and you can focus on them when designing your interactive demo.
On this note, here’s some practical advice from Anubhav Narula, a marketer at Prediko, an inventory management tool for e-commerce apps:
“See recordings of your product usage to identify key interactions and user behaviors. Then, translate these actions into an interactive demo so you mirror real-world usage.”
Another tip is using segmentation to target different ICPs with a relatable AHA moment. For example, at Layerpath, this would be demos on one-click user guides for technical teams and interactive demos for sales or CX teams.
Bonus: Use permissions to restrict unauthorized access
This final tip is more for internal teams than audience experience. Assigning a DRI for demo creation and management — so there’s a single point of accountability. You can also create roles like "Creator," "Editor," and "Viewer" to set appropriate access levels for different team members. This prevents accidental edits and changes to demos.
Explore how access roles work in Layerpath
Add interactive demos to your customer success playbook with Layerpath
Interactive demos are a great way to get customers up to speed — whether that’s during onboarding or new feature adoption. And with interactive demo software, it’s become super easy to create and scale your demo production — even if you’re a team of one.
Simply record your video, and Layerpath’s AI will convert it into a clickable demo, complete with subtitles and voiceovers. And the best part is that you can embed your interactive demos anywhere — your website, product UI, and even help docs — making it easy to distribute them.
Create AI-powered interactive demos in minutes, and increase user engagement (and satisfaction), with Layerpath. Sign up for free and get started today!