When should you break your demo into multiple flow?

I’ve been seeing (rapidly) growing interest in Storylane’s Demo-led SEO strategy so I thought it might be worth digging into the data to share our results so far.

For context, Demo-led SEO originated from an experiment that involved adding interactive demos to 1,500 “tutorial” pages (as an alternative to regular text blogs) with the objective of growing our search traffic. In truth, the outcome has been above and beyond anything I could’ve expected.

In just over a quarter, we’ve increased monthly traffic from 25,000/mo to nearly 150,000/mo through Demo-led SEO. We're on track to hit 200,000/mo by the end of August. But it’s not only about rankings and footfall. These Demo-led pages have significantly outperformed textual blogs in terms of on-page performance, product sign-ups, and even deal conversions. 

In this edition of The Plot, I’ll break down the data to reveal how our Demo-led SEO pages compare to industry benchmarks. In later editions, I’ll share a detailed guide on why Demo-led SEO has worked so well for us — and how you can adopt the same.

I. SERP Rankings

Let’s start from the top. Of the roughly 1,500 Demo-led SEO pages we’ve published so far,

• 91% of pages rank in the top 20 results
• 53% of pages rank in the top 10 results
• And most impressively, 19% of pages rank in the top 3 results

What’s especially interesting is that the majority of these articles started ranking in under 10 days — all with significantly lower word counts (Avg 50-100 words) than the competition. This goes to show that lengthy, keyword dense content really isn’t everything when it comes to satisfying searcher intent.

Here are a few examples of Demo-led SEO pages outranking competing pages:

II. Website Traffic

Naturally, this boost in rankings has had a major impact on website traffic as well. Since launching this Demo-led SEO initiative, our impressions and clicks have increased by 6x in just over a quarter:

As mentioned, we went from around 25,000 monthly clicks to close to 150,000 monthly clicks in around 3 months. We’re on track to breaking 200,000 by the end of August.

III. Bounce Rate

It’s one thing to draw in a lot of website traffic — but what does visitors behavior actually look like on-page? Here’s how the data stacks up in terms of bounce rates, engagement time, and views per user.

As per ContentSquare’s 2023 Digital Experience Benchmark Explorer, the year-on-year bounce rate in the Software industry has increased by 5.25%. As it stands, the benchmark for bounce rate is a scary 70.3%. Correspondingly, the average engagement rate is at just 29.7%. 

Here’s the fun part:

‍Over the past quarter, our Demo-led SEO pages achieved an average bounce rate of just 28.8% and an engagement rate of a whopping 71.2%. 

Of course, the nature of these tutorials may have a part to play in this dramatic improvement — but there’s no denying that the inherently “engaging” nature of interactive demos have contributed to the 2.4x lower bounce rate than industry benchmarks.

IV. Engagement Time

Average engagement time per session is auto-calculated via web page data set up with Google Analytics. The benchmark for this metric is around 52 seconds. Our Demo-led pages achieved just about 15 seconds. This is just under 30% of the industry average. On first glance, this may seem catastrophic. After all, we’ve been taught that engagement time is crucial to Google’s rankings.

But…the data seems to disagree.

‍A quick time-to-value may in fact be seen as a benefit to user experience. Why should a visitor spend several minutes on a long textual tutorial, when an interactive demo could convey the same information in just a few seconds? This may explain why these pages continue to rank as well as they do — even with significantly lower engagement times.

V. Page views per User

Finally, we arrive at page views per user. Page views can be an important indicator of a visitor’s interest in your business (or at least your website). So how do Demo-led pages compare against traditional web pages? Pretty well! 

While the average number of page views per session in the software industry hangs around 2 pages, Demo-led SEO pages achieve views per user of 2.15. This is around 7.5% better than the industry benchmark. This may seem like a humble improvement, the implications are real. Visitors viewing more pages directly translates to better intent, and in turn, greater odds of conversion. 

Before concluding this edition, it’s also worth highlighting the bottom line impact of Demo-led SEO on conversions and pipeline. Even in its early days, we’re seeing a very healthy 40% MoM improvement from this initiative. Most impressively, over the past quarter, we’ve closed multiple annual deals worth $10,000+ that can be directly attributed to Demo-led SEO.

All this is to say that the value of Demo-led SEO is not limited to improving top of the funnel traffic. Instead, I see it as a genuinely powerful channel to attract qualified visitors and drive real revenue.

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Learnings & Takeaways

In summary, here’s our experience with Demo-led SEO over the past quarter:

• SERP Rankings: Over half of our 1,500+ pages ranking in the Top 10 of the SERP (and 19% in the Top 3). Theories on why this is working for us involve Google’s preference for interactive content and iframes. More on this soon…
• Website Traffic: A 6x skyrocket in website traffic from 25k/mo to nearly 150k/mo as a result of the excellent boost in rankings and the user engagement that followed.
• Bounce Rate: A nose dive in bounce rates (28.8%) as compared to industry benchmarks (70.3%). This is attributed to the inherently engaging, clickable nature of interactive demos (as compared to textual content)
• Engagement Time: A significant drop in engagement time from industry benchmarks of 52 seconds to about 15 seconds. While this may initially seem like cause for concern, improving a visitor’s speed-to-value may actually be beneficial under Google’s eyes. This is reflected in the aforementioned performance in rankings.
• Page views per User: A notable achievement of 2.15 views per user from Demo-led pages as compared to industry average of 2. This likely has a multiplier effect on sign-ups and conversions.

Want to know how long your next demo should be? Say less.

Interactive demos are immersive, educational, and well...a lot more fun than regular old product images and videos. But how much is too much?

• At what point does an interactive demo go from engaging to excessive? 
• How does the length of an interactive demo impact its completion rate? 
• And what’s the perfect number of steps for an interactive demo? 

When I initially analyzed the data, I realized that answers to these questions largely depend on the nature of the audience, business, and industry. A complex product built for specialized customers probably warrants a lengthier demo than a relatively non-technical product.

Accordingly, to start with, I examined 34 demos across 9 industries to benchmark the average number of demo steps against completion rates.

• Step count: The number of steps contained within a demo (across flows)‍
• Completion rate: The rate at which engaged users complete the final step of a demo

Note: Interactive demos have a wide range of use-cases — each with its own “ideal” range of steps. To maintain hygiene, I’ve limited this analysis to marketing demos. That is to say, I’ve only considered demos that are placed on websites (homepage, product pages, solutions pages, etc) as marketing assets. In upcoming editions of The Plot, I’ll look into how step counts differ across other use-cases as well.

Okay, enough talk. Let’s get into the numbers.

Summary Statistics

• Number of Demos: 34 demos | 5,409 demo sessions 
• Number of Industries: 9 (Sales Tech, Marketing Tech, Product Tech, Finance Tech, HR Tech, Education Tech, Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, Data Tech)
• Average Demo Step Count: 21
• Minimum Step Count: 5
• Maximum Step Count: 88
• Average Completion Rate: 26%
• Maximum Completion Rate: 72%
• Minimum Completion Rate: 0%

Step Count vs Completion Rate

An aggregate analysis reveals a strong negative correlation between a demo’s step count and completion rate. Less is more: As the number of steps in a demo increases, the completion rate decreases.

More steps means more effort. Expectedly, this translates to fewer people completing the entire demo. A tweet (in most cases) is easier to get through than J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings trilogy. The logic here is no different. Especially since the majority of website traffic is still at the top of the funnel, brevity makes all the difference between completion and cessation.

• The top 10% of demos achieved a completion rate of 64.02% with an average step count of 9‍
• The bottom 10% of demos achieved a completion rate of 1.39% with an average step count of 37

Average Step Count, By Industry

Now that we’ve established that shorter demos usually outperform longer ones, in terms of completion. Let’s explore how step counts vary based on industry.

Even across industries, the trendline is clear: lengthy demos result in lower completion rates. 

The top 3 industries (Product, Marketing, and Sales) achieve an average completion rate of 41% with an average step count of 11.

The bottom 3 industries (Cloud, CyberSecurity, and Data) achieve an average completion rate of 10.7% with an average step count of 43.

Interestingly, there is a positive correlation between an industry’s technicality and demo length.

Cloud Computing, Cyber Security and Data Technology typically sell to highly technical buyers, which may explain why their interactive demos average at 43 steps. There's just a lot of material to get through.

On the other hand, Marketing and Sales products are relatively non-technical. In such cases, restricting the demo to under 12 steps seems to work best.  All in all, for marketing use-cases, our analysis recommends no more than 8-12  steps.

Learnings & Best Practices

In addition to the cold hard numbers, let's conclude this essay with a few qualitative learnings and patterns from the analysis.

• Decisive, not drawn-out: Aim to hook visitors to the larger value of your product within the first couple of steps of your demo. Avoid dragging prospects through page after page of granular detail. Remember, you don’t have to cover every little feature — only what customers care about most. 

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• Concise, clean copy: The best performing demos adopt simple, non-technical copy in their interactive demos. Persuasive, clear language helps a wider audience relate to your product. This practice applies across the board: tooltips, hotspots, media modals, and CTAs.

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• Segment with flows: Of course, it’s not always possible to compress an entire product into under a dozen steps. In such cases, implementing a “choose your own adventure” flow structure helps prospects organize their exploration, and avoid being overwhelmed by a new piece of software.

I don’t know about you, but I've yet to come across a piece of marketing that’s as simple yet persuasive as a call-to-action button. It’s incredible how a few well-chosen words within a colorful little box can make all the difference between a customer’s curiosity and conversion. 

Arguably more important than its design or copy, however, is the placement of the CTA button. That is to say: the accessibility, frequency, and positioning of your CTA all play key roles in turning views into clicks. 

While there’s tons of research on CTA placement for websites and landing pages, we thought it might be helpful to conduct a similar analysis for the CTAs that go on interactive demos. We examined conversion data across 19 companies and thousands of demo sessions to arrive at 3 actionable insights that I’ll be covering in this edition of Storylane Labs.

Summary Statistics

• Sample size: 19 companies
• Avg interactive demo conversion rate: 26%
• Avg CTA frequency: 3.04
• Avg number of unique CTAs: 1.3
• Most common CTA position: End of demo/flow

Our research finds that the average CTA conversion rate with interactive demos is 26%. To me, this is already pretty great given that even the most successful landing pages convert at around 10%. 

But what’s really staggering is that the best performing demos in our analysis achieved conversion rates of a whopping 52%. Fifty. Two. Percent. Keep in mind that these aren’t small ask CTAs either — I’m talking heavy hitters such as “Get a demo” and “Book an onboarding call”.

So what are these demos doing so right with their CTA placement that over half their sessions proceed to the next desired action? Here are three learnings:

Insight #1 -  Persistence pays off

Rather than a sporadic sprinkling of CTA buttons, the most successful demos deploy a persistent CTA throughout the length of the flow. No matter how hard we try, we’re never going to know exactly what a user is looking for until we chat with them.

Accordingly, it’s that much more difficult to predict and place a CTA on the exact steps of the product demo that will resonate most with a user. Using a persistent CTA ensures that no matter where a buyer is along your demo, they have access to next steps. 

Insight #2 - What’s better than one? Two!

15% of the demos in our analysis achieved conversion rates greater than or equal to 50%. Every single one of these demos employed two CTAs: a primary and a secondary.

Intuitively, I’d assumed that a single CTA ensures a focused ask, which in turn translates to improved conversion rates. However, the data reveals that surfacing a couple (2) CTAs at the same time can actually drive up conversion rates. 

But here’s the catch: There must be a hierarchy in CTAs; they can’t both be “big asks”. 

For example, a dual CTA of “Book a demo” and “See pricing” is one big ask (Book a demo) and one small ask (See pricing). This is not demanding too much of prospects, and in fact, there’s a good chance they proceed to book a demo after they visit the pricing page.

“Book a demo” and “Start for Free”, on the other hand, are two big, big requests. I’d be over the moon if a prospect follows through with one of them, but asking for both is asking for too much. Try to avoid this. 

Insight #3 - End on a high note 

Finally, and this one may be a little more obvious, is to end your demo with a primary CTA. The value of finishing strong is easy to appreciate, and the data agrees.

If you decide against deploying a persistent CTA on your demo, placing a CTA on the final step will help make up for it by encouraging users to proceed to next steps.

This may be to book a demo, start a trial, or maybe even explore other demos of your product — regardless, this placement works well. Note that this concluding CTA may (and should) be placed at the end of every flow as well; not just at the end of the overall demo. 

And there you have it! As an added bonus, here are two of the highest and lowest performing CTA copies each from our analysis. Of course, context is paramount when it comes to effective copy, but these may nonetheless be helpful when you’re building your next interactive demo:

Highest converting CTAs

• “Get a demo”
• “Learn more”

Lowest converting CTAs:

• “Let’s talk”
• “Start free trial”