Interactive Walkthrough: How To Create One for Your SaaS

Just like test-driving a car or trying a new pair of shoes before purchasing them, wouldn’t it be great to do the same with a SaaS tool before committing?

That's exactly what your customers are thinking, and it might be the reason your “book a demo button” is losing conversions. You can give them what they want by creating an interactive SaaS product demo.

So what's an interactive walkthrough anyway? It's a new generation of product tours that allow prospects to experience the tool firsthand before purchasing it.

It gives them the freedom to explore the product on their own, engage with it and test all the features. This leads to increased conversion rate, activation and retention. Not to mention how much time it saves you as you don't have to schedule live demos for leads that are not yet qualified.

You don't need any experience or special skills to create interactive walkthroughs. All you need is reliable demo automation software like HowdyGo that lets you create product walkthroughs in a couple of minutes.

In this article, we'll explain everything you need to know and help you get started.

What is an interactive walkthrough?

Interactive walkthroughs are product tours that allow users to engage with the product and have a hands-on experience without commitment. They let users explore the tool on their own so they can see whether it's a good fit for them.

You can embed them on your website or landing page as they demonstrate the value and quality of your product much better than screenshots or even videos. That being said, it's crucial to distinguish interactive walkthroughs from video recordings and video demos.

Unlike standard demos, which you watch passively, app walkthroughs have many interactive elements, such as tooltips, scrollable pages, clickable elements and fields. Leads can explore them at their own pace and create their own experience, as they're often able to go back or skip parts they're not interested in.

Although interactive walkthrough tools may initially look like screen recordings, that's not the case. They capture the HTML and create a pixel-perfect copy of your app that you can edit, enhance and customize.

For example, you can add explanations or highlight some features that might go unnoticed. Also, if you upgrade your product and add new features, there's no need to create a new walkthrough from scratch – simply edit the existing one by adding those new features to your existing walkthrough.

Finally, you can personalize and customize app walkthroughs for each customer by adding their name and other details.

All these elements increase viewer engagement, resulting in educated prospects who are more ready to purchase.

Click here to discover other inbound marketing software for SaaS companies that can help you attract more users.

The benefits of interactive walkthroughs

Here are the top five benefits of interactive walkthroughs:

• Increased conversion rate: Interactive demos allow you to build trust with prospects, as seeing your product in action is much more convincing than seeing a bunch of screenshots. Also, interactive demos allow you to strategically place CTAs and lead capture forms in the moments when users are the warmest and most likely to engage. This strategy worked for HowdyGo's client Flagsmith that increased signups by 1.7x simply by adding interactive demos to their website. Learn how Flagsmith uses interactive product demos in this case study.
• Improved onboarding process and reduced churn: Interactive demos can be used both for user onboarding and showcasing the product to prospects who haven't committed yet. When talking about user onboarding, this format allows you to provide additional explanations and share tips and hacks on how to get the most out of your product. This leads to a higher activation rate and less churn, as our experiment shows that new users who went through an interactive walkthrough were 80% more likely to perform multiple activation steps.
• Improved user experience:  Potential customers can engage with interactive walkthroughs whenever and however they want. Our data shows that adding interactive elements to your demos can increase engagement by up to 90%. The ability to create tailored-made experiences inevitably increases user satisfaction.
• Smoother sales process: Interactive demos also increase sales velocity, as users no longer have to sit through long sales calls or bother with booking calls. Not to mention how much it reduces the barrier to entry, as many people give up when they have to schedule a sales call to see a product in action. Interactive walkthroughs help leads learn about the product on their own terms and become warm leads, which also means less work for your sales team as they now get to focus their efforts only on qualified leads. A win-win situation!
• Cost-effectiveness: It's enough to record an interactive walkthrough once and you can use it for years to come, as you can easily edit it and update it with new features so it always reflects the latest version of your product.

How to create an interactive walkthrough for your SaaS

We'll now show you how to create a great interactive product demo without spending a lot of  time and effort.

Planning your interactive walkthrough

Here are three things to do before creating interactive walkthroughs:

1. Identify your target audience and their needs

Who is your target audience? Is your product made for beginners or experts and tech-savvy individuals? Of course, you can have multiple target groups, but you should customize the demo for each of them.

For example, a quick demo might be enough to engage complete beginners, as you don't want to overwhelm them with the number of features. On the other hand, there's no need to explain basic features to experts, so you should create walkthroughs that focus primarily on more advanced features and little-known hacks.

You should also figure out why users want your product and what they are trying to solve. You can use the Jobs-to-be-done method (JTBD) which says users select your product to do some particular job or solve a particular problem for them. Once you know what that job is, you can show them exactly how your product could help them.

2. Define the key features and functionalities to showcase in your walkthrough

Yes, you could simply press the Record button and go with the usual workflow in your tool. However, if you want to create more effective and impactful walkthroughs, you should make a brief list before you start recording and outline the key features and functionality you want to show.

You don't need to show every single feature, as it can become tiresome and overwhelming. That's why focusing on the most valuable features is a good idea. If you decide to go into detail, don't forget to add navigation so that users can skip parts they're not interested in.

3. Adjust the structure of your interactive walkthrough to make it engaging

Map out the user journey to ensure each step in the walkthrough is relevant and engaging. Break down the user's path into different stages with chapters and briefly outline what you plan to mention at each stage. (This is much easier if you’ve taken our advice on step 2 above!)

You can add interactive UI elements such as tooltips, annotations and animations as needed. Don’t be afraid to iterate on it over time. It’s very easy to change the order of steps in your walkthrough, or adjust the copy you’ve written in your annotations.

If there's a lot of information, it's a good idea to divide your walkthrough into chapters and give each chapter a name that clearly shows what it is about so the users can decide whether to watch it or not.

A well-structured storyboard ensures a smooth and consistent user experience. The founders of Howdygo can help you out with this step, since they helped dozens of SaaS companies create their click-through demos.

Designing your interactive walkthrough

Here are some tips to help you create interactive product walkthroughs and make sure users complete:

Let's start with the design, which creates the first impression. It can make or break your demo’s success.

• Keep the UI clean and simple. Avoid clutter or unnecessary details that could distract new users unfamiliar with your product (you can even edit and remove or blur them using HowdyGo’s HTML editing function after recording).

• Follow the visual hierarchy to ensure that the most important information stands out first. HowdyGo's client Ansarada decided to highlight the most important parts with a bright green brand color.

• Use consistent branding in terms of colors, fonts and style. You can use your custom colors for interactive elements – HowdyGo's client Flagsmith used their recognizable shade of purple to stand out and make users remember them.

• Use animations to engage users and show them how some features work (for example, notifications, data entry, drag-and-drop, etc). There’s nothing extra to do here, HowdyGo records everything you do as you do it. You can just toggle animations on during the editing process.

And now, here's how you can improve your copy:

• Be concise. Use short and clear sentences, as no one wants to read walls of text in the app. HowdyGo's client BOGIO followed this principle and added multiple short annotations that users can scroll through instead of one long piece of text.

• Make it user-centric. Remember, it's not about your tool and how great it is. It's about showing users how you can help them solve their problems using your tool. See how HowdyGo's client  ADInstruments addresses the users on the welcome screen by immediately saying what's in it for them and how they can benefit from watching this product tour.

• Personalize your copy by adding the user's first name or company name. Here's how HowdyGo's client Skodel greets the users by their first names.

• Use action words to activate users and make them engage with the product. Try out verbs like "explore", "discover", "unlock", etc.

• Feel free to use emojis in your copy as they make it seem like a friendly conversation and can boost user engagement. Check out how HowdyGo's client Visitly used emojis in their annotations.

Creating your interactive walkthrough with HowdyGo

Here's how to create and implement an interactive walkthrough using HowdyGo's demo recording software.

1. Create your account

• Sign up for HowdyGo with your email address and start using it for free. There's a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
• Download HowdyGo's Chrome extension that you'll use to record your walkthroughs.

2. Capture a recording

• Go to your app or website and then open the HowdyGo extension. When you're ready to start, press "Start Recording" and start working on your tool.

• HowdyGo will automatically divide the recording into steps that are easy to follow. To add a new step, simply click on something, and the tool will capture the screen. The number of steps will equal the number of clicks you make. Of course, you can edit them later, add new steps or remove redundant ones, etc.
• If you want to click on something without it being recorded, simply pause the recording and do whatever you need to do.
• When you've finished, press "Stop Recording" to save the recording, or "Cancel Recording" to start over again.

• Don't close this tab until you've finished uploading your files. It's usually done pretty quickly, but it depends on the duration of your recording. Once everything is uploaded, the app will automatically take you from this tab to HowdyGo's Editor.

3. Edit the recording

It's enough to record your product once, and you can edit it an unlimited number of times. You can even use the same recording to create multiple versions of your demo, for different buyer personas.

Here are some of the options:

• Annotations: Every step comes up with an annotation in the place where you've clicked. You can edit every annotation by adding more text or highlighting something that's not emphasized enough in the recording. Just click on the annotation, and the text editor will appear.

• Section breaks: To add sections between any two steps just tap on Insert section break and choose the content you want to add to your section break, whether it's text, illustration or lead capturing form.

• Deleting a step: To delete an unnecessary step, simply click on the trash icon next to its picture in the left-side menu.

• Reordering: You can reorganize the whole demo by dragging and dropping the step thumbnails in the left-side menu and creating the order you want.

• Adding a new step: As mentioned above, you can always update your walkthroughs with new steps. Simply tap on the Insert step at the bottom of the left-side menu. You can either add an existing step, something that you've already captured in the original recording. Or you can choose to capture a brand-new recording.

4. Add a lead capture form

As mentioned, you can strategically place lead capture forms in your walkthrough and use them to capture contact information.

• First, add a section break as described above.
• After that, create a lead capture form by adding the fields for leads to fill out: name, email, company, phone, country, etc. You can add as many fields as you want.

5. Divide it into chapters

If the walkthrough is longer, we strongly suggest dividing it into chapters and allowing users to skip the steps if they want. Here's how to do so:

• Open the Chapter Settings on the right side of the screen.

• Decide where each chapter should start and place chapter markers there. The number of chapters is up to you, as it can depend on the duration or complexity of the demo.

• Preview your interactive walkthrough to see whether you're satisfied with its outline and chapters.

6. Animate the steps

This is one of the coolest parts of product demo video production with HowdyGo. You're not limited to static screenshots and you can show the users what happens behind the scenes to help them understand your product better.

You can do that in the form of an HTML animation. We like to use this to showcase data input, drag-and-drop, live pop-ups and notifications.

Here's how to animate the steps:

• Tap the Play button on the right-side menu to open Step Playback Settings.
• Toggle to turn on the Animate option.
• And that's it! You don't have to do anything else as the steps containing movement will automatically be animated.
• The animated steps will be labeled with a small video tape icon on their thumbnails so that you can easily recognize them.

7. Edit the captured HTML

You can edit the visual content of your platform after recording the demo. This option comes in handy if you want to blur user names and pictures for security reasons or personalize a product tour for an important prospect by adding their company's name.

• First, turn on the HTML editing option by clicking on the top right button.

• Click on any element you want to edit to open the Edit bar. Delete the existing text and enter the new text you want to add.

• The good news is that you don't have to edit every step manually, you can bulk-apply changes. This is useful if you want to edit a user's name that appears in all steps. Tap on Find and Replace at the bottom of the screen and enter the text you want to change and the text you want to replace it with.

8. Personalize your walkthrough

Personalization is one of the best ways to increase conversion rates and HowdyGo takes it to the next level.

You can add personalized text in the annotations or when editing HTML elements (as described in the previous step).

Just use the double curly brackets and write your variable between them: {{variableName}}

A variable can be any element you want to personalize, whether it's user name, company name, or something else.

9. Add custom branding

Here are some of the most popular customization options:

• Use custom colors: Use your recognizable brand's colors for different walkthrough elements, such as buttons, tooltips, ripples and others.
• Customize your font: Write the text in annotations using your brand's font.
• Customize browser frame URL: Add the URL of your website to make the walkthrough experience feel more authentic.
• Add your custom domain: You can host product tours on your domain if you want. Click here to see how to add a custom domain.

10. Share your interactive walkthrough

Congratulations, your first interactive product tour is live! It's time to share it with the users. HowdyGo provides you with not one but three ways to distribute your interactive product tours:

• Sharable link: The fastest and simplest way is to copy a link and share it with the users. You can send them a link directly, or add it to your email campaigns and social media posts, etc.
• Embedded tour: You can embed your tour on your landing page, as it's proven to increase conversions*. You don't need any coding knowledge; we can give you an HTML embed code that you just have to copy and paste.

• Demo center: If you have a lot of product walkthroughs, you may want to create a demo center. You can host it on HowdyGo or your own website, whatever is easier for you.

Of course, this is not the end as you should always look for user feedback that can help you improve your product.

*Check out other examples to increase SaaS landing page conversion rates.

Successful interactive walkthrough results

After talking about all the benefits of using interactive walkthroughs, let's quickly recap what you can expect to achieve using real product walkthrough examples from HowdyGo's clients.

Here's what interactive walkthroughs brought to Flagsmith, a feature flag tool for developers:

• 1.7x more signups for trial accounts
• 1.5x higher in-app activation rate
• Over 580 unique clicks on the sign-up button

Click here to see other interactive product demo examples that will inspire you.

Conclusion

Interactive product walkthroughs are quickly becoming a standard for SaaS companies as users want to get a sense of your product before buying it.

They have many benefits, from increasing conversion rates to boosting activation and improving overall user experience and satisfaction.

With interactive walkthrough software like HowdyGo, you can create professional product tours within minutes, even without experience.

Try it out for free and see first hand!

If you want to learn more about interactive walkthroughs and compare different product walkthrough software, continue here:

• 7 tips for better interactive product demos
• The interactive demo hierarchy
• Navattic vs Reprise
• Storylane vs Walnut
• Arcade alternative
• Storylane alternative
• Walnutio alternative

FAQs

What is an interactive walkthrough?

It's a product tour with interactive elements such as tooltips and clickable buttons that allow users to engage with the product and explore its features on their own before deciding to purchase.

What are the types of walkthrough?

There are different classifications, but the three main types of walkthroughs are:

1. Platform overview – it guides users through the platform showing them all the key features and functionalities
2. Feature overview – it focuses on a particular feature and it can be used to introduce new functionalities and increase feature adoption
3. Use-case deep dive – it's more specific and it shows users how to solve a particular problem using the tool

Of course, we can also classify walkthroughs based on when we use them. Marketing and sales walkthroughs are used to encourage users to purchase the product. On the other hand, user onboarding walkthroughs are used after purchasing to guide users through the app and encourage them to activate.

What is an interactive guide?

Interactive guides are hands-on tutorials that allow users to explore and engage with a platform in real-time. They have interactive elements such as tooltips, navigation, clickable buttons and fields. They allow users to create their own in-app experience, instead of being a passive viewer only.

What is feature walkthrough?

A feature walkthrough is a tutorial that teaches users how to use a specific feature within a product or platform. It provides step-by-step instructions, often including visual cues and interactive elements. You can also add tips and tricks to help them work faster or get the most out of that feature.