Demos can be rather passive, if you let them. Click next. Click next. Click next. Your brain checks out somewhere around step four and you're just going through the motions.
Close shows us how to break that pattern with one small feature.
A few steps into their overview demo, the tooltip asks you to type "Close" into the search bar. You can’t move on until you actually type it. And the second you finish, the demo reacts and moves you to the next step on its own.
It's a little jarring. It's also a little magical. And it completely snaps you back to attention in a way that clicking next never could.
There's something to this beyond the novelty. The moment you start typing, you're no longer watching a demo. You're using the product. And that’s the state you want your buyers to get to.
Every team with more than one demo eventually has the same argument. Which demo do we put on the homepage? And once you pick one, the next fight starts: checklist or interest demo?
Lead Onion is giving us a 3rd option.
Instead of picking one demo or building a menu, they worked with their web team to create a custom visual that asks the user to identify their situation first.
The result is a homepage demo experience that somehow manages to be both more personal and less complicated than anything we usually see.
Last week, we showed Homebot doing something similar with their filter system. Lead Onion takes that same instinct but bakes it into a custom-designed visual that feels like part of the page.
MoEngage went a different direction with their demo center layout. And we love it. They're making small decisions that add up to a page that feels special.
Their demo center alternates between rows of two and rows of three (2, 3, 2, 3), which creates a rhythm that feels like a designer got their hands on it. The variation keeps your eye moving without making the page feel chaotic.
And instead of the left rail that everyone defaults to for filters, MoEngage moved them to the right side of the page. Maybe it’s a personal opinion, but it feels more natural to us. Your eye lands on the demos first…which is the whole point.
But here’s something we’ve never seen before. MoEngage featured a carousel as the hero, which rotates through demos before you even get to the grid.
Navattic just released a major update to their MCP server.
Now, not only can you get performance metrics or reminders to refresh your demos, you can actually build and edit demos directly from AI agents like Claude 🤯
For example, say you want to build a new demo flow using an existing capture collection. Just type "Build a first draft demo using Captures from Marketing Conversion Demo"
Or say you want to refresh your existing demo with more benefit-focused messaging. Just type "Edit all of my existing step text to be more benefit versus feature-focused."
All it takes is simple natural language prompts, and you can let AI build and improve your demos for you.
A live, FREE coaching session to help you build better interactive demos (and make them your top marketing asset.)
In these 45-minute coaching sessions, Eric and Jason answer your questions about demo strategy, distribution, sales enablement, and any other challenges you're facing with interactive demos.
The next session is Wednesday, July 22nd at 12PM ET.