Interactive Demo Storyboard: How to Visualize Your Product Demos

Shreelekha Singh
September 18, 2023
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Instead of lengthy sales calls or vague cold messages, interactive demos give your prospects a front-row seat to experience your product in real-time, on their own.

But creating perfect product demos can be tricky. 

You might not know where to start, what capabilities to cover, and how to maintain a cohesive flow for your demo. Feeling overwhelmed? This guide is for you. 

We’ll give you a practical, no-nonsense recipe to create an interactive demo storyboard for making each demo a winning one. 

What is an interactive product demo?

An interactive product demo is a digital presentation that showcases a product's features and use cases. It allows users to actively engage with and explore the product in real-time, giving them a hands-on experience and a clearer understanding of how the product can meet their needs. 

Why you need to storyboard your interactive demos

An interactive demo storyboard is a visual layout outlining the sequence and flow of your product demo. It describes the main steps, interactions, and transitions in your demo—acting as a blueprint for how the final output will look and function.

Here are five main reasons why you should create an interactive demo storyboard to make a seamless demo presentation:

  • Get a clear vision and direction: Storyboards act as a visual roadmap for the entire demo. They offer clarity, ensuring that the final product aligns with the intended message and goals. By laying out each step in advance, you can identify and eliminate distractions and create a cohesive flow.
  • Build a compelling product narrative: Storyboards help in crafting a logical and engaging narrative to highlight key product features and benefits. A well-structured narrative can also make the demo more impactful by keeping viewers engaged from start to finish and ensuring easy understanding.
  • Document for product changes: As products evolve, storyboards serve as a tool to track and update changes in your interactive demos. This layout gives you a quick way to make demos up-to-date with the product's latest features without any confusion. It also provides a record of your past demos to document product changes. 
  • Collaborate effectively with the team: Visual representations in storyboards make it easier for team members to understand the vision and provide feedback. This collaborative approach enables everyone to contribute in refining the final output. It also reduces the scope of miscommunication for aligning the final product with the collective vision.
  • Save time and money in the long run: The storyboarding process can help you identify potential issues early and avoid costly revisions. A well-planned storyboard also streamlines the production process, reducing the need to constantly edit or recreate the output. In the long run, this proactive approach can lead to significant savings, both in terms of time and budget, while ensuring a high-quality output.

Without storyboarding, the flow can be incoherent and lead to confusion among watchers. This miscommunication could mean your product's story loses its impact, and tracking updates becomes challenging. 

Essentially, without a storyboard, you’re inevitably compromising the quality and efficiency of your interactive product demo. 

A tried-and-tested recipe for creating interactive demo storyboard

Want to create a seamless storyboard to create high-impact interactive demos? Here’s our step-by-step framework for getting the best results. 

1. Decide the purpose and audience 

Understanding the purpose of your demo and identifying the target audience are foundational steps in creating an effective interactive demo storyboard. 

Every demo serves a unique purpose, whether it's to introduce a new feature, educate users, or drive sales. 

By pinpointing this exact objective, you can tailor the content to meet that specific goal. This clarity ensures that every element of your demo, from visuals to narration, aligns with your intended outcome.

Moreover, knowing who will be watching your demo is equally crucial. Different personas can have different needs, preferences, and familiarity with your product. 

For instance, a demo for tech-savvy users might want to know more about technical specifications, while generalist users would focus on basic functionalities.

Once you're clear on the purpose and audience for your interactive demo, it becomes easier to decide which features to spotlight. This is where creating example customer personas can be a game-changer. 

For instance, Techie Tom might be a 30-year-old software developer who values advanced features, while Casual Carl could be a 50-year-old who just wants user-friendly basics. 

By crafting your demo with these personas in mind, you can ensure the tone, language, and content resonate with real segments of your audience, making the demo more impactful and relatable.

2. Outline the length and CTA for the demo

After establishing the purpose and audience in step #1, the next logical step is to determine the length of your demo and determine the CTA you want to incorporate. Here's how to approach this:

💻 Determining the length based on its purpose

The duration of your demo should align with its purpose and your audience’s average attention span. 

For instance, if you're introducing a complex feature to a tech-savvy audience, a longer, in-depth demo can work well. On the other hand, if your goal is to capture the interest of casual users on social media platforms, a shorter, snappier demo would be more effective. 

Referring back to the customer personas from the first step can provide insights into how much time your audience is likely to invest in watching your demo.

🔊 Crafting a relevant CTA

The CTA is the action you want viewers to take after watching your demo. It could be anything from signing up for a trial, exploring a feature, or even sharing the demo with others. 

The key is to make the CTA relevant to the demo's purpose and appealing to the audience. 

For example, if your demo targets Techie Tom, the CTA might prompt her to explore a technical whitepaper or join a webinar. On the other hand, for Casual Carl, the CTA could be a simple invitation to try out the product's free trial.

3. Identify the aha! moments to highlight

At its core, an "aha! moment" is a sudden realization about your product’s capabilities. It's that instant when the light bulb goes on, and something that was previously confusing becomes clear. 

Psychologically, these moments are compelling because they trigger a rush of dopamine. This makes the learning experience more enjoyable and reinforces product understanding. 

In the context of a product demo, an aha! moment can transform a passive viewer into an engaged and enthusiastic potential customer. Once they reach an aha! moment, they’ll be more motivated to try your product and talk to your team. 

Here’s how you can identify and highlight aha! moments in your product demos:

  • Integrate user feedback: One of the best ways to identify these moments is by listening to your existing users. Their testimonials, reviews, or feedback sessions can reveal moments when they truly understood the value of your product or feature.
  • Resolve key pain points: Think about the primary challenges or pain points your product can solve. The moment your product offers a solution to a longstanding problem can be a significant aha! moment for viewers.
  • Find unique features: Highlight features or benefits that set your product apart from competitors. When viewers realize they can't get a particular benefit anywhere else, that's a potential aha moment.
  • Build anticipation: Before revealing the solution, briefly delve into the problem. This creates a narrative tension, making the resolution (or the aha! moment) even more satisfying.

4. Define demo steps and write the copy 

The magic of your interactive demo storyboard lies in the copy for each step. Consider every step as an opportunity to convince potential customers about your product’s potential. 

So, start by outlining the main points or features you want to cover in the product demo. For each point, write a concise and clear description. Prioritize clarity over cleverness to make your copy engaging and easy to understand. 

Remember, the goal is to guide the viewer through the demo seamlessly, so avoid jargon or overly technical language—unless it's appropriate for your audience.

Follow these tips to create copy for different types of users:

  • Technical audience: For audiences like IT professionals or engineers, it's okay to use industry-specific terms and delve into the technical aspects of your product. They'll appreciate the depth and detail.
  • General audience: For a broader audience, keep the language simple and jargon-free. Focus on the benefits of your product and how it can solve their problems or improve their lives.
  • Younger audience: For a younger demographic, consider using a more casual tone and incorporating current slang or references. This makes the demo feel more relatable and engaging for them.
  • Professional audience: For business professionals or corporate clients, maintain a formal and respectful tone. Highlight the value proposition and ROI of your product.

🌟 Use Floik’s WYSIWYG editor

Bring your copy to life with Floik’s What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. You can visualize your text any way you want with easy formatting options like bold, italics, underline, bullets, and hyperlinks. 

It's especially useful to make your copy fit well with the design and layout of your demo. You can easily format text and make adjustments to ensure that the copy aligns perfectly with your visuals.

Here’s how your copy would look once formatted:

interactive demo example

5. Document the flow of steps 

Before diving into the demo creation process, spend time documenting your demo’s flow. This ensures that your demo progresses logically, is easy to follow, and effectively communicates the intended message.

Documenting all the steps beforehand can help you:

  • Create a logical progression: By documenting the flow, you ensure that each step in the demo builds upon the previous one. This logical progression helps in maintaining the viewer's interest and understanding, preventing any confusion or information overload.
  • Boost efficiency in production: Having a clear flow in place streamlines the production process. It acts as a blueprint, guiding the design, animation, and voiceover teams, ensuring everyone works in harmony towards a unified vision.
  • Cover key points: By laying out the flow, you can ensure that all essential features, benefits, and selling points of the product are covered in the demo. It also helps in identifying any gaps or redundancies in the content.
  • Collect user feedback: By involving real users in the review process, you ensure that the demo resonates with its intended audience. Their feedback can guide adjustments in tone, language, and content to make the demo more impactful.

You can fine-tune your storyboard based on user feedback. This iterative process can make the final output more polished, effective, and aligned with user expectations.

6. Create, edit, & ship your demo

Once you've laid the groundwork with a well-defined flow and received feedback on your storyboard, it's time to bring your demo to life. 

Floik is a powerful platform to create winning product demos in a few minutes. You just have to toggle the browser extension and record your screen showing all the crucial features you want to include. 

Then, Floik will prepare a first cut of your interactive demo. You can edit and refine this demo, add more content, and customize it per your branding. 

Once you’re ready with the finished output, you can share it with prospects via a URL or embed it on crucial landing pages with an embed code. It’s an effortless process! 

Don’t forget to follow these best practices before you publish and distribute your demos:

  • Review and refine: After the initial creation, review the demo multiple times. Look for any inconsistencies, errors, or areas that can be improved. Ensure that the content flows smoothly and that the aha! moments are effectively highlighted.
  • Gather feedback: Before finalizing, share the demo with a select group, which could include team members, stakeholders, or a test audience. Their feedback can provide valuable insights for refinement.
  • Choose the right platforms: Based on your target audience, decide where to share or host your demo. This could be on your website, social media platforms, email campaigns, or industry-specific forums.
  • Optimize for each platform: Depending on where you plan to ship or share your demo, optimize it for different platforms. This could mean adjusting the resolution for YouTube, creating shorter versions for social media, or ensuring mobile compatibility.

After releasing the demo, track metrics like views, completion rate, and engagement rate to gather insights and make necessary iterations for future updates.

Impress customers with standout interactive product demos

Crafting an interactive product demo is the same as telling a story where your product is the protagonist. It's not just about showcasing features; it's about weaving a narrative that resonates. 

Begin with a clear purpose, understanding who you're speaking to, and what they truly seek. A well-laid storyboard is your script, ensuring the demo flows like a riveting tale, punctuated with "aha!" moments that captivate. 

But, the magic lies in iteration. You should focus on collecting feedback and polishing the content until your demo is impactful enough. Create interactive demos in minutes with Floik—sign up today