Planning your Demo

Interactive demos are the future, helping you resonate better with the audience at every stage of the buying journey. To create killer demos, you need to plan them well.

• Determine the Goals

• Choose your Demo Type

• Best Practices

Determine the Goals

Before recording a demo, think of what you want to showcase in the demo. Start by answering the following questions:

• Who is your audience? Use their vocabulary. Avoid internal language & tech jargon.

• What are the key 3-5 "aha" moments you want to showcase?

• What would be CTA action for your users? eg: start trial, request demo, etc.

• How many product chapters do you want to showcase? We recommend not more than 8-12 steps in each chapter.

• Do you plan to have a gated product demo? eg: lead form in the beginning or middle or end of demos.

Choose your Demo Type

Once you have some idea of what you would like in your demo then go ahead and "Open the Extension" and click on "Create New Demo". With Storylane, you can record two demo types:

Screenshot Demo	Choose this demo mode if: You don't need to edit demo content (HTML screens) Only need a self-guided demo
HTML Demo	Choose this demo mode if: You need to customize and edit demo content Need to use in live demos that feel like a real product

Best Practices

Rock your first few demos with these killer tips and tricks!

1. Keep your demo short We recommend having between 8-12 steps. If you need to have more than that you may split your demo into multiple chapters.

2. Build a story, not a demo To maintain viewer engagement with your demo, don't just focus on guiding them through your product. Create a compelling narrative that accompanies the product demo.

3. Have an eye-catching beginning Start your demo with something that sparks the viewer’s interest. It might be a fun welcome message, an image, or a video.

4. Capture the lead If you want to track who’s going through your demo, make sure you capture the lead by asking the viewer for their email address or passing the email address as a UTM parameter.

5. Have a CTA Include a distinct call-to-action button that guides the viewer to book a call with you or other relevant pages based on your use case.

6. Have a secondary CTA To ensure maximum exposure of your call-to-action (CTA), adding a widget with both NEXT and CTA buttons in the middle of your demo is suggested as some viewers may not reach the end.

7. Brand color You can use the batch update feature to change the color of all your widgets at once to align with your branding.

8. Multiple links for a demo To track the performance of a demo in various locations, you can generate multiple links for it.
9. Reuse stories You can reuse stories in two ways: copying screens from one demo to another or duplicating the entire demo.

10. Track engagement Examining the analytics of your shared or embedded demo provides crucial insights for enhancing it.

11. Bored? By this point, you’re probably bored by our best practices and advice. Thus, this is a second reminder to keep your demo story short. :)