6 Ways to Improve Demo Conversions on Your Site [with Examples]

What is demo conversion? 

Demo conversion is when a prospect requests a demo on your site. It’s a crucial step in acquiring paid customers for SaaS businesses that are not fully self-serve. 

Demo requests can come from many channels, usually through your site’s call-to-action (CTA) buttons or a demo landing page. 

What about interactive demos? 

Interactive demo conversions are when a prospect takes action once they’re finished interacting with a product tour. The most common CTAs after interactive demos are: 

• Start a free trial 
• Book a demo
• Sign up
• Try for free
• Get Started

What are good demo conversion benchmarks to aim for?

According to Unbounce's study of 44,000 landing pages and 33 million conversions, the median conversion rate is 4.3%. That accounts for all industries. For SaaS specifically, let’s say that 5% is a good benchmark. 

What about interactive demo conversion? 

The median CTR conversion on interactive demos is 8%, with the top 25% of demos converting 25% of prospects and the top 1% converting 67%. 

As you’ll see below, incorporating interactive demos in your demand capture strategy boosts your demo conversion rate across the board. 

6 expert tips for optimizing demo conversions 

1. Make your demo page simple and clear

Inundating prospects with too much information on your demo page will cause drop-offs. 

A common mistake is duplicating information they’ve likely already consumed elsewhere on your site. 

This depends, of course, on where they’re coming from. 

▶️ When a lead comes to a demo page without any context, it’s recommended to add more content that educates the user about your company and product.

▶️ On the contrary, if the lead is coming from a regular page on your website (and thus already has context about you), you can make your demo page short and concise.

2. Manage expectations & handle objections

Canva is the undisputed king of user experience. When you initiate a free trial of their pro plan, what they do is brilliant. 

They explain what you can expect from the trial and what will happen until the subscription start date. 

This sets expectations and removes surprises that can frustrate prospects. 

In the context of demo pages, this can also act as an opportunity to handle objections that prospects may have before submitting their information to request a demo.   

Here are a few examples: 

• “You will not be spammed by marketing emails”
• “This demo will take a maximum of 30 minutes”
• “You will not be opted into marketing campaigns” 
• “You should come to the meeting prepared with ….” 
• Etc. 

Cognism takes a unique approach and calls out who the solution is not for ⤵️ 

3. Non-generic social proof 

Everyone can list logos on their demo page. Take it further. Showcase relevant case studies with tangible ROI prospects can expect if they purchase your solution. 

5. Make the next step as easy as possible

You shouldn’t delegate work to your prospects, especially to gather information you can get without them through enrichment or sales research. 

What you can do: 

• Limit the number of form fields and enrich in the background
• Don’t force page redirects when you don’t have to 👇

• ALet prospects decide what they want to do next. Here’s an example 👇

6. Embed interactive demos & videos

Propsects who view interactive demos convert at a higher rate than ones who land on a stale landing page.

In most cases, embedding an interactive product tour on your demo page will lead to more opportunities for your sales team.

How to build interactive demos that convert

Step 1: Map out your interactive demo goals, your ICPs, and their use cases

Before you record an interactive demo, you need to know and plan for: 

• Who you’re building it for (focus on one or two ICPs at a time).
• What your ICP will most want to discover (because you can’t show all of your features at once).
• Why it’s relevant for you and your prospect to insert an interactive demo as part of the buying process. 

Answering these will help guide what you include in demos and make them more successful. 

Step 2: Record, edit & personalize your first interactive product demo

We’re biased, of course, but according to public reviews, Arcade is the best interactive demo platform out there. Want other options? Check out this list. 

Now that you’ve chosen your demo software and are ready to create one, here’s what makes a high-converting interactive product demo ⤵️ 

Focus on clarity and engagement

Demos should be designed to clearly explain how users can achieve specific outcomes or solve problems using the product or service.

Plus, attention spans are short. You have a chance to move from passive to interactive viewing. 

This involves:

• Step-by-Step Guidance: Break down processes into manageable steps, ensuring users can follow along easily.
• Clear Objectives: Start with a clear statement of what the user will learn or accomplish by the end of the demo.
• Visuals and Interactivity: Incorporate visuals and interactive elements to maintain user interest and facilitate understanding.
• Short and Focused: Aim for brevity to hold the audience's attention, focusing on the most critical aspects of the offering.

🕹 Arcade features to try: pan and zoom, backgrounds, chapters, hotspots, and callouts.

Personalize the experience

Tailoring the demo to meet the specific needs or interests of the target audience can increase engagement and relevance.

Strategies include:

• Segmentation: Create different versions of the demo for different audience segments.
• Interactive Elements: Allow viewers to choose their own path and self-tailor the demo.

🕹 Arcade features to try: custom variables and advanced branching.

Combine “how-to” steps with storytelling

Demonstrating how your product solves a customer's problem is crucial.

This can be achieved by:

• Better storytelling: Don’t think of your Arcade as a “how-to.” Every step is part of the story.
• Benefits over features: Focus on how the features translate into tangible benefits for the user.

🕹 Arcade features to try: synthetic voice and chapters.

Drive (and track) actions

Every demo should have a goal. Maximize your viewers' attention by providing clear instructions on the best next steps.

This involves:

• Multiple touchpoints: Don't wait until the end to provide options. Include call-to-action buttons within the demo.
• Track performance: With Insights, see how your Arcade performs across time, and understand which path(s) your audience took. Make sure to include tracking on your CTAs with UTMs.
• Connect to your existing tools: Whether you are looking to connect Arcade forms to your Hubspot CRM or want more robust insights on product behavior in Amplitude, Integrations allow you to go a layer deeper.

🕹 Arcade features to try: custom branding (watermark and share button CTA), forms, and theme.

Best-In-Class Examples from SaaS Companies

Canva (World-class demo page)

Found at: https://www.canva.com/contact-sales/ 

Why it’s great: 

• Manage expectations: Below the tagline, Canva explains clearly what you’ll get when you request a demo and why you should do so. 
• Tangible benefits: Canva shows the ROI that larger businesses can expect from implementing Canva company-wide in an easily digestible and concise manner. 
• Social proof: They show you logos of Canva customers that match the type of leads they want to attract with custom demos. Clicking on a logo redirects to a detailed case study. 
• Lengthy form: 99% of Canva users can become successful by signing up on their own and inviting their teams. Furthermore, since Canva attracts large volumes of prospects (they have 170M active monthly users), their sales teams need to solely focus on highly-qualified leads. Asking more questions in demo forms will filter out lower-quality prospects and give sales reps more information to use to maximize demo conversions. 

Skilljar (Use product tours to drive demos)

Found at: https://www.skilljar.com/lms-online-demo 

Why it’s great:

• Book a demo CTA on the first page: They don’t wait for prospects to finish a product tour to ask for a demo. The demo CTA is right off the first page and likely captures most leads that would otherwise not have engaged with the tour. 
• Always-on demo CTA: At any time during Skilljar’s product tour, leads can click on the Skilljar logo at the bottom right of the Arcade to get a personalized demo. 

• Demo CTAs between chapters: In between every demo chapter, the team offers prospects to continue interacting with the platform or get a live demo from sales.

• Data-backed social proof: Skilljar goes further than a logo banner. Below the interactive demo, they reference case studies with relatable ROI results.

Anrok (Gate your product tour)

Found at: https://www.anrok.com/product-tour 

Why it’s great:

• Preview: Before you start the demo, they show you what you can expect the platform to look and feel like. 
• Social proof: Big and bold logos to showcase Anrok’s best known customers.
• Simple form: The form is simple and concise. Instead of asking prospects to fill it in, they likely enrich the data in the background.
• Capturing high-value interest: Anrok’s average sale price is higher than that of your regular product-led SaaS. Therefore, they have an incentive to maximize the likelihood of converting every single lead. To ensure this, they gate their product tours, thus giving their sales and marketing teams a way to retarget leads who don’t convert directly from the interactive demo.

Rudderstack (Product tour in lieu of demo)

Found at: https://app.arcade.software/share/zGdiocEGaKwwqYrtd2lO 

Why it’s great:

• Filtering leads: Rudderstack chose to redirect some of its prospects to a self-serve demo (using Arcade) instead of to a demo landing page. This helps filter bad leads and let prospects who could otherwise self-serve get familiar with the platform before they start.
• Multiple options for prospects: The demo page itself is simple and doesn’t contain anything else from the product tour. However, Rudderstack’s team integrated options to fit every possible user experience. From the page, you can 1) sign up, 2) request the demo, and 3) get back to the site.