You put a ton of work into creating interactive guides that mimic your product experience, but how much work are you spending optimizing them for driving metrics you care about?
This guide covers, from obvious to advanced tactics top SaaS companies use when creating high-performing interactive demos.
Companies like Zapier, Retool, Clay, Wrike, and Labelbox, with whom we’ve had privileged access to their strategies and demo experiments.
Below, we’ve ranked X interactive demo tactics you should implement in 2025 with benchmarks to measure against to see if you’re building a top 1% demo.
1. Understand who your audience is
The most important thing to remember in marketing that so few put emphasis (real emphasis) on: knowing who your demo audience is and what they want to discover.
Who’s the main persona we’re targeting with this demo? What do they need to know?
Gain insights into your target audience's roles, challenges, and goals to tailor the demo content accordingly.
How did they get here? Where does this demo fit in the buyer journey?
Align your demo with the stages of the buyer's journey—awareness, consideration, and decision.
For example:
Home page → More generic overview of your solution.
Case study landing page → Perhaps a workflow demonstration that’s relevant to the pain point referenced in the case study.
❌ You don’t want to give buyers a generic overview when they already know what you do and seek specific answers.
How have similar viewers engaged with our demos?
Analyze past demo data (view example below). Look for drop-off points and steps with high CTA clicks.
You can edit or remove the high drop offs, and optimize high-engagement sections.
Filter insights by persona to see if your demo resonates with the intended audience ⤵️
2. Optimize your demo structure
The most effective interactive demos have an average of 12 steps and include around 9 product images.
Avoid overloading with information: Present information clearly and succinctly to maintain the prospect's attention and prevent cognitive overload.
Try to be as close to your actual product experience as possible to encourage prospects to give it a try themselves. Sometimes too polished demos create doubt and cause drop-offs at onboarding when new users don’t get what they expected.
💡 Tip: Record with HTML capture to duplicate your product’s exact HTML/CSS code (view below 🔽)
Read more: 15 Interactive Demo Statistics You Need to Know in 2025
3. Turn small static assets into “micro-demos”
Now that the best interactive demo platforms (like Arcade) let you build demos in only a few minutes, consider embedding “micro-demos” across your website and product experience.
Why it matters: interactive assets drive more conversions, and lead to more product engagements. In fact, new users are 80% more likely to perform multiple activation steps if they engaged with an interactive demo before signing up.
3 examples from companies you know 👇
Claybooks by Clay
How micro demos are used: to showcase how to do every step of a Claybook (example here)
Micro demos on Nudge Security’s site
How micro demos are used: They replace static product screenshots in feature and benefits sections of their website (not everywhere, example here).
Wrike’s onboarding checklist
How micro demos are used: They show new users what they need to do at every step of the onboarding process.
4. Advanced engagement techniques
Integrate storytelling: Craft a narrative that connects emotionally with the prospect, illustrating how your product can transform the way they operate daily.
Incorporate real-time interactions & effects: Use technologies that allow prospects to interact with the demo in real-time (more on this at tactic #8), and advanced effects that drive longer demo engagements ⤵️
Combine videos & interactive elements: Videos help keep viewers engaged when demo steps are longer or require manual input, while interactive click-through steps increase viewers’ likelihood to convert. Combine both for optimal results ⤵️
5. Map out your demo UX in detail (CTAs, branches, chapters, and next steps)
Create multiple paths for personas and use cases: The top 10% of interactive demos use 1.4x more branching paths and 1.2x more intro chapters than the median demo. Plan out ways for viewers to only engage with what is relevant to them.
Offer various ways for viewers to convert: The best interactive demos include many ways for viewers to raise their hand, or take action. Leverage CTAs like chapter buttons, forms, etc.
Always offer next steps: If your prospects aren’t ready to convert, make it easy to discover more about your solution by adding “Back to menu” buttons or suggest other features they might want to learn about. Here’s an example from Skilljar 👇
6. Leverage AI to duplicate high-performing content
AI assistants: Modern interactive demo platforms (like Arcade, Guideflow, Supademo) have AI assistants that can help you improve your existing demos.
AI-enabled capabilities: Use AI to automatically create synthetic voiceovers, translate your demos into multiple languages, or adjust your callout and hotspot text to resonate with a specific buyer type.
7. Strategic placements
- Website integration: Embedding demos on existing web pages leads to 55% more user engagement.
💡 Pro tip: Use hotspot trackers (like Hotjar) to see where people click on your site. Build interactive tours to replace static images that people tend to click a lot.
- Accelerate sales with strategic embeds: Prospects who view interactive demos before sales calls close approximately two weeks faster than those who do not. Embed interactive assets across your GTM initiatives, like email outbound and ad campaigns.
8. Use demo data to power retargeting workflows
- Reveal your engaged audience: Using integration with platforms like Clearbit and Clay, uncover which accounts and leads show strong buying interest.
- Sync qualified prospects to your GTM systems: For example, with Arcade’s HubSpot integration, demo engagement data goes directly to your CRM to create leads and opportunities, assess customer engagement levels, and make handoffs even smoother.
- Activate retargeting workflows to capture more demand: Use demo data to activate workflows like pinging sales reps in Slack, firing retargeting ad campaigns, or automated outreach (i.e., through a website bot). Here’s an example from Navattic (yes, we're not afraid to give our competitors shoutouts) ⤵️
How to get started in Arcade, and further reading 🕹️
Ready to implement these tactics?
Getting started with Arcade is easy:
2. Install our Chrome extension
3. Record your product
4. Make edits and implement one of the tactics shared above (use our AI assistant to do this faster)
5. Publish and share your demo!
💡 The average time to publish an Arcade, from start to finish, is 6 minutes (compared to hours with some of our competitors)!
Other resources you may be interested in 📖
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