The preferences of software buyers have undergone a significant transformation in recent years. One major shift is the preference for self-service methods of purchasing software over lengthy product demonstrations.
To accommodate this change in buyer behavior, it's crucial for software companies to provide a means for buyers to try out their products without the need for scheduling a demo, which has led to the creation of product demo software.
To help you decide which tool to buy for your business, we have pulled together a list of the 9 best interactive demo software options to choose from.
TestBox Convert is one of the most robust offerings in this growing software category. It’s built off of a customer-led buying motion, meaning that customers are empowered to decide how they want to buy.
The TestBox platform allows you to create data-populated proof of concept environments that are an exact replica of your product. With TestBox, buyers can try out your entire platform and all of the features and integrations that are included.
These test environments are fully pre-configured and include guided walkthroughs to further help the customer in deciding whether your software is a good fit for them.
Additionally, Testbox gives buyers the ability to add additional stakeholders to the platform and make notes about the tool as they go, ensuring that everyone is aligned when it comes to the point of purchase.
Finally, you can track analytics such as the amount of time spent in the tool, what specific features leads have tested, and which leads have tried your tool out, equipping your sales team with the necessary information to help close deals.
It stands out from the rest of the tools on this list due to its data-rich environments that are far more robust than just screenshot-connected walkthroughs.
Pricing: Starting at $1,000 per month.
Walnut's interactive product demo software lets you capture screenshots of your product and link them together to create personalized product demos. You can capture your software screens in a few clicks to create a custom walkthrough of the software.
The main product features include instant capture through your browser, no-code editing tools, and easy sharing and tracking capabilities so you can see which of your prospective customers have been into the tool and whether they have used it or not.
The one downside of using Walnut is that the product does not contain real data, meaning that your prospective customers are not able to fully experience what it’s like to use your tool, which may prevent them fully understanding the value it offers.
Pricing: Contact Walnut for pricing.
Like Walnut, Navattic also lets you capture screenshots of your product and link them together to create interactive product tours. Your marketing team can embed these tours on your website, and your sales team can send them to leads.
Teams can also use Navattic’s analytics to measure the impact of your product tours — such as demo completion and drop-off rates — so your sales team is able to qualify customers and become more efficient in how they sell.
Pricing: Starting at $500/month.
Reprise is a product tour tool that allows users to create product demos without any coding or design knowledge. Sales reps can create personalized experiences for prospective customers and steer them to the features of your software that they are likely to love.
It comes with a simple browser extension that enables quick and easy screen capturing, making it really easy to create a demo. On the negative side, Reprise’s UI can be fairly confusing for people, with customers reporting that the amount of features are being prioritized over the usability of the tool.
Pricing: Contact Reprise for pricing.
Consensus offers a number of ways of recording an interactive demo of your product. Like many of the tools on this list, it includes a screen recorder that enables you to easily record the key features of your product.
However, Consensus also has the ability to ask questions about the prospect you are sending the demo to, such as the prospect’s priorities, role, or the vertical they are in. These responses change the specific demo experience to be more custom fit for the prospect you are sending it to.
An additional standout feature is their “Buyer Board,” which allows your champion at the prospect’s company to see which of their colleagues have viewed the demo and how they have interacted with it, giving them additional people to support the purchase of your tool.
Pricing: Contact Consensus for pricing.
Storylane is another no-code product tour tool built for both sales and marketing teams to help them create interactive product demos. With its collaboration functionality, multiple teams can collaborate together.
Storylane gives you the ability to highlight certain areas of your product, ensuring that prospective customers view the features and functionality that are most applicable to them. And its built-in analytics give you good insight into how your prospective customers are interactive with your product tours.
The downside of Storylane is that the product doesn't allow custom branding for all Storylane demos that you create, meaning that there is significant uplift and time that needs to be spent customizing each individual demo with your branding and color scheme.
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans starting at $40/month.
Demostack lets you create handcrafted product walkthroughs based on the things your prospects are likely to care about. Their overlay product sits on top of your live product offering, allowing you to showcase all of your product’s functionality.
In addition to their overlay tool, they also offer the ability for new visitors to your website to take a brief tour of the product before talking to your sales team.
The downside of Demostack is that prospects can only dive into a taste of your tool when they first hit your website, meaning that for them to fully understand the full feature set of your product. they need to talk to sales.
Pricing: Contact Demostack for pricing.
Demoboost gives teams the functionality to create custom recorded product demos. These demos can be saved and stored indefinitely and can be leveraged by the entire organization.
The platform also gives teams the ability to track the performance of these demos and sends this data and insight immediately to Salesforce.
Pricing: Contact Demoboost for pricing.
Arcade lets you record your screen and walk prospective customers through your product, then use their embed feature to attach the recording to an email follow-up or add it to your website so visitors can get a sneak peak of your tool prior to jumping on a call to purchase.
With Arcade, users can go through the interactive demo at their own pace, so they have time to test out your tool prior to joining a full demo.
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans starting at $32/month.
Interactive demo software is a tool that enables buyers to fully experience a product by navigating through its key features and functionalities on their own — without the need for a free trial or live interaction with a salesperson. This self-guided approach allows prospective buyers to explore the product and evaluate its value at their own pace.
The interactive nature of the demo allows customers to interact with the product through clicks and prompts, providing a hands-on experience.
Businesses are always searching for ways to land more deals.
With increasing noise from businesses in the form of cold emails, calls, and direct messages on social media platforms, it becomes difficult for buyers to adequately assess which platform is the best fit for them.
Using interactive demo software quiets this noise, while also driving increased conversions. By allowing customers to experience the software on their own terms — and at their own pace — it makes them more likely to buy your product.
Additionally, having these demos tailored to the user ensures they learn how to use the product before they purchase, leading to better eventual product adoption. Customers understand the value and what the software will bring them through the use of interactive demo software and thus feel confident in purchasing and then using the software.
There are a number of different types of interactive demo software that exist today, and it is worth exploring them and explaining the differences between them.
In the linear adventure style of interactive demo software, prospects are able to take part in a simple walkthrough of your product in a linear, step-by-step process that guides them through your product.
In this type of interactive demo software, prospects are given a number of different linear adventures, allowing them to choose which product path they would like to explore.
For example, one prospect might want to explore the product as the admin to see what the product looks like from that experience, while another prospect might want to view how the product behaves from the end-user perspective.
The self-serve model enables prospects to explore the entirety of the product. The product interface is clickable, allowing prospects to check out all of the parts of the app that they might find interesting.
With sandbox demo software, prospects can jump into a real replica of the tool, complete with a robust data set. This allows them to really try the software out, digging into all of the features and functionality inside of your software and experiencing it as though it was already fully implemented at their companies.
There are a lot of options when it comes to interactive demo software. The information detailed in this article has gone some way in detailing the list of tools and some of the associated pros and cons with each one.
Before making a decision to purchase a tool in this category, make sure you get hands on with the ones that best fit your needs in order to fully experience how it’s going to work for you and your unique use cases.
From there, build consensus with key stakeholders across your organization to ensure that everyone is on board before you make the decision to buy.
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Oh and did we mention it’s free? Because it is.