The impact of interactive demos on conversion rates & sales velocity

Interactive demos follow either a linear, single flow sequence or a chaptered, multi-flow sequence. Which approach should your demos take? Well, as always, the answer depends.

Here’s an example of a single-flow demo:

Productboard, a project management software, deploys a product tour with a single flow sequence containing 10 steps.

Here’s an example of a multi-flow demo:

Sentinelone, a cyber security product, breaks its tour into 3 flows — one for each use-case. The total number of steps amounts to 23.

This edition of The Plot explores 3 data-driven insights around single vs multi-flow interactive demos. To maintain data hygiene, I’ve limited this study to marketing demos (product tours used on homepage, product pages, etc). Our recommendations vary for Sales and Customer Success use-cases because:

• Marketing demos are built for top of funnel buyers looking to learn more about your work. Prospects are typically short on time and attention so brevity takes priority. In this case, a taste of your product’s most relevant features is likely preferred to an in-depth walkthrough.
• By the time a prospect speaks to Sales or Customer Success, they’re further along the buying journey. At this stage, your product’s functionality and user experience take priority. Accordingly, prospects will likely prefer a more detailed product demo experience.

Ultimately, your choice between single vs. multi-flow demos should depend on which approach best showcases your product’s unique strengths to prospects.

Summary Statistics

• Sample Size: 8,800 sessions over 40 demo flows
• Avg step count: 23 steps
• Avg step count, single-flow demos: 26.1
• Avg step count, multi-flow demos (total): 79
• Avg step count, multi-flow demos (per flow): 13
• Avg Completion Rate: 22.21%

1. Twelve or fewer steps? Use single-flow demos

If you can boil your product demo down to twelve or fewer steps, a single flow demo is the way to go. This previous edition of The Plot confirmed a negative correlation between step count and completion rate. Correspondingly, building concise, single flow demos results in outstanding completion rates.

Single flow demos with under 12-steps achieve a completion rate of 34.66% — more than double the completion rate of single flow demos with over 12-steps (14.62%). There’s a clear drop in completion as the number of steps increase.

2. Can’t do under 12 steps? Use Multi-flow demos

We suggest limiting a demo to under around 12 steps. This parameter acts as a forcing function to highlight the most relevant aspects of your product without losing your prospect’s attention. 

That being said, it’s not always possible to do so. If your business sells especially complex/technical products or multiple products to multiple buyer personas, your step count is likely to exceed a dozen. 

In such cases, we strongly recommend breaking your demo into multiple flows. Multiple flows help organize larger demos into easily navigable chapters. Overall, this dramatically improves the demo experience for users looking to address specific use-cases or features.

On the surface, single and multi-flow demos achieve similar completion rates: (22.63% and 21.15% respectively), but a closer inspection reveals a different story. 

• On average, the first flow of a multi-flow demo achieves a completion rate of 47.79%. More than twice as much as the completion rate of the average single-flow demo (22.63%)
• Curiously, the second flow of a multi-flow demo also achieves a completion rate of 27.34% — 1.2x greater than the completion rate of a single-flow demo.
• On average, even the third flow achieves a completion rate of 25.12% — close to 3 percentage points greater than single flow demos. 

What’s especially interesting is that the average number of steps in the first three flows of a multi-flow demo add up to 32. This is well over the average number of steps found in a single-flow demo (26). And what does this mean? Multi-flow demos result in a greater rate of users consuming a more steps!

The real drop off with multi-flow demos occurs after the 4th, and especially after the 7th flow of a demo. Here, completion rates plummet to well under 10%. This leads us to our final insight of the day.

3. Limit the number of flows to under 8 per demo

Multi-flow demos help buyers learn more about various aspects of your product without feeling overwhelmed by a monolithic, all-encompassing flow. Accordingly, it’s important to ensure that the number of flows aren’t themselves too overwhelming to prospects.

The previous graph suggests that any more 8 or more flows per demo results in completion rates of around 5%. Not great. Accordingly, we recommend limiting multi-flow demos to 7 or fewer flows, with 3-5 flows being the sweet spot. 

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Before we wrap up, it’s worth sharing the following disclaimer: At the end of the day, your demo should be tailored to your audience. Depending on the nature of your product and prospects you may find success in ignoring these insights.

That being said, it’s worth using them as a starting point and iterating from there based on your own tests and experiments. For instance, if you sell a highly technical product to developers, your audience may expect to see a comprehensive product demo, even if it means several steps and flows. 

It’s also worth noting that completion rates may not always be the best metric to measure performance. For example, let’s say you create three flows — one for each buyer persona: A, B, and C. Maybe your website receives a lot more of buyer persona B, resulting in disproportionately higher completion rates as compared to the flows for A and C. This is not necessarily a problem with the demo or flow. Rather, it’s a reflection of what matters most to your audience.

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”

You’ve built a great demo and now it’s time to share it with the world. Your website is a promising place to start — but what, where, and how should your demos be placed on-site to maximize engagement? In this edition of The Plot, we’ve analyzed over 130,000 demo sessions to share 3 data-backed learnings on demo placement for your website. Let’s dive in.

What | Home, product, and tour pages

The overwhelming majority of interactive demos are embedded on-page (in-line) or linked to CTA buttons (pop-up) on the homepage, product pages, and/or dedicated product tour pages. This is no accident. These are simply the most relevant pages for visitors to learn more about your product.

We recommend starting with demos for any one (or all three) of these types of pages. Here’s what this could look like:

Homepage demo

A concise, high-level product tour that walks visitors through key features and use-cases in 8-12 steps. The objective here is to capture attention and encourage top of the funnel prospects to learn more about your work. Accordingly, you might want to make this one captivating, relevant, and snappy.

Product page demos

These are demos for top and middle of the funnel prospects looking to dig deeper into specific product features. Accordingly, these demos may be granular; segmented by individual products or solutions. Again, don’t forget to keep them short — highlight only the most pertinent aspects of each product. 

Product tour page

Many customers deploy dedicated product tour pages for prospects to explore multiple features under one roof. This is especially valuable to audiences from highly technical verticals such as cybersecurity. If you have too much product to cover in a single demo, use the Gallery or Playlist layout with Demo Hub. 

Where | The higher up, the better 

Where should your demo show up on the page for maximum visibility? This one is pretty intuitive: the higher up, the better. Placing your demos or demo CTAs closer to the top ensures that visitors come across them without much scrolling. This translates to better demo engagement. The data supports this: there’s a strong negative correlation between the fold a demo is placed on and its click-through rate.

Place your demos or demo CTA buttons on the first fold, second fold, or navbar for maximum visibility. On average, placing demos any lower may result in CTRs that are well under 10%. Not great.

How | Inline vs CTA buttons - dealer’s choice

In the examples shared above, you may have noticed that some demos are embedded directly onto the page (in-line) while others are linked to a CTA button (pop-up or linked-out to their product tour pages). How do these methods differ in terms of CTR? Not by much. On average, in-line demos achieve slightly higher CTRs (26%) than CTA buttons (23%).

Since there’s a negligible difference in terms of CTR, make your decision based on your design preferences and objectives. In-line demos certainly stand out as compared to pop-up CTAs, but if subtlety is what you’re going for, especially on pages with multiple demos, pop-up CTAs may work better. 

In my research for this report, I noticed that most homepages adopt a CTA button while the majority of product and product tour pages adopt in-line demos. It’s worth experimenting to identify what works best for your website.