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Show, Don't Tell

🤫 Show, Don't Tell #66 - Get them to stop sleepwalking through your demos


Read Time: 4.1 minutes

Welcome to our 66th edition of Show, Don't Tell. A newsletter to help you build REMARKABLE interactive demos...3 tips at a time.

This week we're:

  1. Stop your buyers from blindly clicking through your demo
  2. Skip the demo debate and build a third option
  3. Rethink how you lay out your demo center

Let's get after it...

Supported By:

  • Navattic is our favorite interactive demo platform ❤️
  • It's easy to build demos of your product, that feel like the real thing
  • With HTML screen captures, easy editing, lots of sharing options, and powerful analytics
  • ​Try building your first demo for free!​
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Tip #1: Make Them Do… Something

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.

​→ See the moment Close makes you stop and type​

Tip #2: There's a Third Option for Your Homepage

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.

​→ See how Lead Onion built door number three​

Tip #3: Here's Another Way to Stack a Demo Center

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.

Pretty sweet, isn’t it?

​→ See how MoEngage laid out their demo center​

One capture library, available for every demo

This is one of those features that sounds simple, but actually makes a HUGE difference.

If you’ve built multiple demos in Navattic, you’ve 100% experienced the challenge of managing multiple capture collections.

Like when you create a new demo and need to duplicate captures from one demo to the next. Or you waste time capturing screens that have already been captured!

And then you update captures in one collection, but all of your duplicate collections of the same captures remain the same.

NO MORE!

With Workspace Captures, you can now easily manage your screen captures at a Workspace level and re-use them across multiple demos.

And when you edit a screen capture, you know exactly what linked demos will be updated automatically.

So you can focus on getting the perfect screen capture every time and sleep easy knowing that you’ll never need to capture it again.

This feature is in beta for Growth and Enterprise customers, ask your Navattic CSM to get access.

​→ Here’s a quick interactive demo showing you how it works​

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Ask the Dash Bros 🎙️

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, May 27th at 12PM ET.

​→ Register now - It's 100% Free​

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So that’s it. Our 66th edition of Show, Don’t Tell.

3 useful tips to help you build remarkable interactive demos.

Tune in next Tuesday for more advice from DemoDash.

P.S.

If you know anyone else who would love these tips, please consider sending them this edition so they can subscribe 🙏
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​Jason and Eric​
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Show, Don't Tell

Learn how to create remarkable interactive demos that make your SaaS product easy to understand and buy. 3 practical tips and examples every Tuesday.

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