2023: Year-In-Review

You understand how letting prospects experience your product before they sign up creates high-intent leads who convert faster. You know how optimizing for PQLs helps you improve lead-to-conversion rates compared to MQLs. And you just learned how interactive demos influence PQL without dependency on your product team.

But this is where most teams get stuck, i.e., between understanding the concept, and actually shipping their first interactive demo. 

This guide picks up where the theory ends—with the exact steps to go from idea to live implementation.

Choosing your first interactive demo

Your first interactive demo should showcase the one feature or use case that makes your best customers say, "This changes everything.", ideally a core workflow that solves your prospects' biggest pain point.

What’s that one thing you demo that makes prospects lean forward? That moment when a prospect's expression changes from skeptical to interested—that's usually your winner. 

Look at your highest-converting trials or your shortest sales cycles. What did those prospects do first in your product? That's your workflow you include in your first demo. But how do you identify which pain point to focus on?

Mapping pain points to demos

Start with the problem that brings prospects to your website in the first place.

Your sales team is sitting on gold here; ask them how prospects discovered you. They likely already have this info, but it doesn't hurt to check the demo/discovery call transcripts and look for clues.

You can even ask your sales team to include the question in the demo/ discovery call to uncover what your prospects were looking for when they found you.

If they're coming because "reporting takes too long," your first demo should show them building a report in minutes. Yes, you have cool “data integration” features, and they can come into play too, but start with the core pain point first.

For example, if prospects struggle with manual data entry, don't make your first demo about your advanced analytics. Show them the interactive demo of your tool, eliminating the data entry entirely. Lead with the workflow that makes your product the direct solution to their stated problem. (Bonus points if you use realistic data that matches their industry and company size. Psst: Storylane’s HTML capture lets you manipulate data you showcase in just a few clicks!)

The sweet spot is a workflow that can demonstrate clear value within 3-5 minutes. You want prospects to reach an "aha moment," not get lost in configuration steps.

Here's an example of an interactive demo in action:

Building that first demo

Your interactive demo needs a narrative arc. The most effective demos follow a simple three-act structure: 

Problem → Solution → Outcome. 

Begin by acknowledging their pain point directly—if reporting takes hours, start with a screen showing cluttered spreadsheets or manual processes. Then demonstrate the workflow that eliminates that pain. End by showing the result they care about: the report generated in minutes instead of hours.

Keep the clicking purposeful. Each interaction should move them closer to that "aha moment." Guide them through a logical sequence that builds confidence. Show the recipe, not the kitchen.

Pro tip: Create scenarios around outcomes they're trying to achieve, not features you want to showcase. Instead of "Here's our dashboard," try "Here's how you'd track this month's pipeline velocity." The language shift makes all the difference.

Additional ideas to explore:

Use data that mirrors their world. If you're targeting mid-market SaaS companies, show realistic monthly recurring revenue numbers, churn rates, and customer acquisition costs they'd recognize. For enterprise manufacturing prospects, use supply chain metrics and production volumes that make sense for their scale. (Storylane's HTML demos let you customize and insert data on the fly for different audience segments)

Where to place your first demo

Start with your highest-intent pages—the places where prospects are already showing buying signals. Your homepage could be an obvious one, but you might get better mileage on product landing pages.

Product pages convert better than homepages for interactive demos. Someone reading about your "reporting features" is closer to purchasing than someone just learning about your company. Place your demo where prospects are already trying to understand how your product works.

Landing pages from paid campaigns are goldmines. These prospects clicked an ad about solving a specific problem—now show them the solution in action. Replace or complement your lead capture forms with interactive demos. Show them how your product works within the context of the ad query.

A simple placement rationale:

1. Product/feature pages - They're already interested in capabilities
2. Campaign landing pages - High-intent traffic from ads or outreach
3. Pricing pages - They're evaluating, show them value before cost
4. Homepage - Broader audience, but still valuable for brand awareness

Don't bury your demo behind multiple clicks. Make it prominent with clear value-focused copy: "See how [specific outcome] works". The goal is to meet prospects where they are in their evaluation process.

Okay, but what metrics should I track?

Interactive demos give you a granular understanding of your prospect’s interest level with respect to your product capabilities. Demo views would be an important metric to track.

Demo completion rates and engagement rates allow you to dig deep and gain far richer insights about your prospect behavior.

If your demo has three key workflows, measure how many prospects complete each one. 

• Someone who rushes through in 30 seconds isn't the same as someone who spends 4 minutes actively clicking through different chapters of the demo.
• Engagement depth matters. A prospect who spends 2 minutes exploring your reporting workflow and returns to it twice shows higher intent than someone who passively clicks through everything once. 
• Look for patterns: which sections create the most engagement? Where do high-intent prospects spend their time? And most importantly, look for areas where engagement dips—these are dead spots you need to polish or, possibly, remove.

Demo engagement correlation with trial signup quality

The real magic happens when you connect demo behavior to trial performance. Prospects who complete specific demo workflows are more likely to hit trial activation milestones.

Track which demo interactions predict successful trials. If prospects who explore your integrations section in the demo are more likely to actually set up integrations during trials, that's your qualification signal. These patterns help you identify pre-PQLs based on demo engagement.

Bonus tip: If you want to dig deeper, you can create multiple cohorts: demo completers vs. non-completers, deep engagers vs. surface-level clicks. Then measure their trial activation rates, feature adoption, and conversion to paid.

Leading indicators that predict which demo viewers will become customers

Certain demo behaviors consistently predict purchase decisions. Someone who shares the demo with team members is signaling buying committee involvement.

Look for workflow-specific engagement patterns. If your best customers always use feature X, prospects who spend significant time in that demo section are higher-intent leads. Time spent in pricing-related screens or integration demos often correlates with near-term purchase decisions.

The main idea is to connect demo engagement back to your existing conversion data. Which demo behaviors mirror the early signals your best customers showed during their evaluation process?

Real examples to steal from

What you can steal from Cognism

Cognism puts their interactive demo front and center on their homepage. No forms, no friction—just immediate product showcase.

The steal: They lead with their strongest use case (prospecting workflow) rather than trying to showcase everything. Their demo follows a realistic sales scenario: finding contacts at a target company, enriching data, and exporting qualified leads. The entire flow takes 2-3 minutes and shows a tangible outcome—a list of prospects ready for outreach.

Tactical takeaway: Don't gate your primary demo behind forms. Make it the easiest thing to access on your most trafficked pages. Focus on one complete workflow that delivers a clear result prospects can envision using immediately. Make sure to use a sticky CTA within the tour to capture leads.

What you can steal from Sprout Social

Sprout Social's guided tour walks through their social media dashboard using real brand data and realistic posting scenarios. They don't show generic social posts—they simulate managing an actual brand's content calendar with scheduled posts, engagement metrics, and team collaboration.

The steal: They contextualize each feature within a broader workflow. Every click advances a realistic social media management scenario.

Tactical takeaway: Connect individual features to complete business processes. Show prospects how your tools fit together to solve their daily workflows, not just what each feature does in isolation.

What you can steal from SentinelOne

SentinelOne created an entire demo hub with scenario-based experiences for different security threats. Prospects can choose their specific concern (ransomware, endpoint protection, threat hunting) and see how the platform responds to that exact scenario.

The steal: They personalized the demo experience based on prospect interests. A CISO worried about ransomware sees different workflows than a security analyst focused on threat detection. Each demo addresses specific pain points with relevant scenarios.

Tactical takeaway: Create multiple demo paths for different use cases or personas. Let prospects self-select into the scenario most relevant to their situation rather than forcing everyone through the same generic experience.

Scaling beyond your first demo

Once your first demo proves its value, it’s time to scale.

If prospects spend the most time in your reporting workflow, consider creating a dedicated reporting-focused demo for campaigns targeting that specific pain point. Build depth before breadth.

Create demo variations for different audience segments rather than completely new demos. Your core workflow stays the same, but the data, industry context, and use case scenarios change. A marketing team sees campaign performance metrics while a sales team sees pipeline data—same product capabilities, different relevance contexts.

Connecting demo insights back to the overall PQL strategy

Demo engagement data becomes your early warning system for PQL potential. Prospects who complete specific demo workflows mirror the behavior patterns of your best trial users.

Use demo analytics to refine your traditional PQL criteria. If prospects who explore integrations in your demo consistently become high-value customers, make integration setup a stronger signal in your PQL scoring. Demo behavior often predicts trial behavior more accurately than demographic data.

Create feedback loops between demo performance and product development. If prospects consistently drop off at the same demo section, that workflow might need simplification in your actual product. 

The ultimate goal is creating a system where demo engagement serves as a leading indicator for PQL conversion, giving your team earlier and more accurate qualification signals than waiting for trial milestones

How Storylane makes this implementation seamless

Storylane (hey, that’s us!) eliminates the technical barriers keeping you from implementing interactive demos that drive better PQLs— allowing users to deploy PQL-driving demos without engineering dependencies.

How do we do this?

• AI-native interactive demos: Generate interactive demos with AI in seconds that prospects can explore independently.‍
• Browser extension captures your actual product interface in minutes and automatically generates product tours that mirror your actual interface
• Smart customisation: Edit text, images, and present industry-relevant data in your demos—no coding needed.
• Analytics integration: Track engagement depth, workflow completion, and sync demo behavior back to your CRM for seamless lead qualification.
• Lead capture forms: capture leads within the demo with lead forms and convert visitors to high-intent leads

Common objections you might get (and how to address them)

You will likely get objections from stakeholders. And that’s a good thing, as it gives you the opportunity to address them and get stronger buy-in once you address them. Here are the common objections:

“Our product is too complex for demos."

Complex products often benefit most from guided tours that break down complex workflows into easy-to-understand chunks. Just pick one workflow that delivers clear value. Your prospects don't need to see everything - they need to understand one thing really well.

"We're worried about showing our product before qualifying them." 

Product education IS qualification. Besides, you're already showing your product in sales demos to unqualified prospects. This just moves product education earlier, where it can actually do the qualification work. Prospects who invest time learning your product demonstrate significantly higher purchase intent than those who simply download content.

"Our sales team won't like this." 

Sales teams love leads who already understand the product. Their conversations become about implementation instead of basic education.

"We don't have resources to build interactive demos."

Interactive demo platforms like Storylane remove technical barriers, allowing marketing teams to create interactive product demos in minutes without requiring engineering resources. You can easily capture your product’s front end without any technical know-how. The demo platform automatically makes the perfect HTML replica of your product. Your job is just to tell the story.

Ready to implement your first interactive demo?  Start your free trial with Storylane and build killer demos in minutes! Capture, customize, and deploy interactive demos across your website—no coding or engineering dependencies.

If you're in the market for demo automation software, you've likely come across Storylane and Walnut.io. This comparison aims to help you differentiate between both platforms to guide your purchase decision.

Why customers prefer Storylane over Walnut.io

At a high level, Storylane and Walnut share several similarities. They’re both demo automation softwares that support HTML/CSS demos, browser extension-based capture, demo engagement analytics and insights, and CRM integrations. That being said, Storylane stands out significantly when it comes to product versatility, user satisfaction, pricing flexibility, and overall platform capabilities. Here's how:

Storylane vs Walnut.io: Key Differences

TL;DR: a few broad reasons why 4000+ customers choose Storylane over Walnut.io

• Flexible formats (HTML + screenshot + video)
• Designed for cross-functional adoption across GTM (Not only for Sales)
• AI-native demo automation (AI demo creation, sales agent Lily, etc.)
• Free tier with feature-rich plans (No upfront investment needed)
• Higher user satisfaction (#1 rated on G2 vs. Walnut currently out of Top 20)

1. Flexible demo formats vs. HTML-only approach

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to capture interactive demos:

• Image/video demos: Screenshot and video-based demos with sequential steps. While they have limited interactivity, they're quick to create, load faster, and work well for specific use cases.
  
  
• HTML/CSS demos: Clickable demos that capture the product's look, feel, and interactions, allowing for editing on-screen elements such as text, data, and graphics.

Walnut focuses exclusively on HTML/CSS-based demos, which can be limiting when teams need video walkthroughs or screenshot-based demos. Storylane, on the other hand, is expressly designed for both demo formats — complete with auto-capture, annotations, guides, blurs, zooms, presenter videos, voiceovers, and more.

This flexibility puts Storylane in a significantly stronger position when it comes to scaling demos across departments and use-cases. Marketing teams can create image-based guided demos for websites, sales teams can use HTML/CSS demos for personalized experiences, and customer success can leverage video demos for onboarding.

2. Cross-functional platform vs. sales-centric tool

Walnut.io is built primarily for sales teams, which can create friction when marketing, presales, or customer success teams need to create and manage demos. The platform's focus on sales workflows makes it less accessible for other departments.

Storylane is specifically designed for horizontal adoption across the entire go-to-market organization:

• Marketing teams use it for top-of-funnel engagement
• Sales teams leverage it for personalized demos
• Presales teams rely on it for technical demonstrations
• Customer success teams implement it for onboarding and training

This cross-functional design is evident in features like Demo Hub, which allows teams to create galleries and playlists of demos that address multiple buyer personas and use cases in one place. Walnut does not offer comparable functionality.

3. User satisfaction and ease of use

User satisfaction data reveals a significant gap between the platforms. Walnut currently ranks 17th on G2's demo automation category with a satisfaction score of 32/100, while Storylane maintains substantially higher ratings with a satisfaction score of 99/100.

(Update: As of July 2025, Walnut is no longer in the top 20 demo automation software)

Storylane's intuitive interface and self-serve capabilities contribute to its higher user satisfaction. The platform's design focuses on practical usability rather than just aesthetic appeal, making it easier for teams to create, manage, and share demos without extensive training.

4. Tiered pricing vs. upfront investment

With a starting price of $9,200/year and no free tier, Walnut requires a substantial commitment upfront. This high entry point can be prohibitive for smaller teams or organizations wanting to test demo automation before making a significant investment.

Storylane’s pricing plans offer a more accessible approach with:

• A self-serve free plan that allows teams to build their first demo without financial commitment
• Tiered pricing options that grow with your needs
• More features available at lower-tier plans compared to Walnut

5. AI-native demo automation platform

One of Storylane's biggest differentiators against Walnut is AI functionality:

• Easier, faster demo creation for sellers: Generate or improve demos in seconds with product-specific guides, prompt-based editing assistance, voiceovers, and more.
• Contextual demo discovery for buyers: Storylane’s Lily AI can be trained on your demos, sales calls, and knowledge base to guide prospects through conversational product discovery

Storylane’s demo creation capabilities include:

• Create with AI: Generate complete demos with guides, voiceovers, and visual enhancements
• AI Avatars: Choose from dozens of avatars or create one of yourself for studio-quality presenter videos
• AI HTML/CSS Editor: Customize demo environments with simple prompts — no code needed
• AI Voiceovers / Translation: Access 65+ voices and 25+ languages to expand accessibility

As it stands, Walnut does not currently offer comparable AI features, putting them behind the innovation curve in the rapidly evolving demo automation space.

6. Buyer Hub and superior organization

Storylane's Buyer Hub is a flagship feature that allows teams to showcase libraries of bite-sized product demos, PDFs, videos, and more through galleries and playlists. This organization makes it easier to:

• Present relevant demos to different buyer personas
• Create curated demo experiences for various stages of the buyer journey
• Maintain a centralized repository of demos that different teams can leverage

Though Walnut supports a playlist style demo experience, its organization capabilities are relatively limited, making it challenging to manage multiple demos for different audiences and use cases.

Making your choice

Your decision ultimately depends on your priorities:

Choose Walnut if:

• Your use case is exclusively sales-focused
• You only need HTML-based demos
• You're comfortable with the higher upfront investment

Choose Storylane if:

• You need a platform that works across marketing, sales, and customer success
• You want flexibility in demo formats (HTML, video, screenshots)
• You value AI-powered creation and customization
• You prefer a more accessible pricing model with a free tier
• User satisfaction and ease of use are priorities

Storylane vs Walnut.io: FAQs

What's the difference between Storylane and Walnut.io?

Storylane supports multiple demo formats (HTML, video, screenshot) and is designed for cross-functional teams, while Walnut focuses exclusively on HTML demos for sales teams. Storylane also offers AI features, a free tier, and higher user satisfaction ratings.

Does Storylane support HTML and video demos?

Yes, Storylane supports both HTML/CSS interactive demos and video/screenshot-based demos. This flexibility allows teams to choose the best format for their specific use case.

Is Walnut better for sales demos?

While Walnut is built specifically for sales teams, Storylane actually offers superior capabilities with AI-powered creation, better personalization, and higher user satisfaction. Storylane's cross-functional design also enables better collaboration across teams.

Does Storylane have a free plan?

Yes, Storylane offers a self-serve free plan that allows teams to build demos without financial commitment. Walnut starts at $9,200/year with no free tier.

What is Lily AI in Storylane?

Lily AI is Storylane's intelligent sales assistant that guides prospects through conversational product discovery based on your demos, sales calls, and knowledge base. It's part of Storylane's AI-native platform that includes demo creation, avatars, and voiceovers.

The bottom line

While both platforms will help you create interactive demos, Storylane offers a more versatile, user-friendly solution that scales across departments. Walnut's sales-specific approach works for certain teams, but its HTML-only focus, higher price point, and lower user satisfaction scores make it a more limited option for organizations looking to scale their demo strategy.

We encourage you to try both platforms and see the difference for yourself. Storylane's free plan makes it easy to get started without a significant commitment. If you choose to work with us, we hope the question "what's next?" excites you as much as it excites us!

Related Reading

Top Walnut.io Alternatives for Your Demo Needs

If you're in the market for demo automation software, you've probably come across Storylane and Navattic. This comparison should help you differentiate between both platforms to guide your purchase decision.

Why GTM teams prefer Storylane

At a high-level, customers prefer Storylane for the product functionality, versatility, ease-of-use, commercial model, and rate of innovation.

1. Product functionality

Before diving in, here’s a quick overview of core features common to both Storylane and Navattic — really, they’re table stakes for any modern demo automation platform:

• Self-serve free plan: Build your first demo on your own, for free
• Browser extension: Chrome extension for click-based capturing
• HTML/CSS demos: Clickable, editable HTML-based demo capture
• App integrations: Your usual suspects - CRMs, Slack, Zapier, etc.
• Demo analytics: Account reveal, performance metrics, intent signals, etc.

And with that out of the way, here are a few ways Storylane stands out from Navattic...

1.1 Flexible demo formats

Broadly, there are two formats of interactive demos:

• Image demos: Screenshot or video-based demos with sequential steps. Limited scope to control on-screen elements and interactions, but quick to create and load.
• HTML/CSS demos: Clickable demos that capture the product's look, feel, and interactions. On-screen elements such as text, data, and graphics may be edited. 

In their own words, Navattic only specializes in top-of-funnel HTML demos. Storylane, on the other hand, is expressly designed for both demo formats — complete with auto-capture, annotations, guides, blurs, zooms, presenter videos, voice overs, and more. 

What does this mean for you? With Storylane, you have the flexibility to pick between demo formats based on your needs: image-based guided demos for your website, video demos for email campaigns, HTML demos for sandbox environments, etc.

This flexibility (coupled with the next set of differences) puts Storylane in an unequivocally stronger position when it comes to scaling demos across departments and use-cases.

1.2 Agentic demo automation with Lily AI

One of Storylane’s biggest differentiators against Navattic (and pretty much every other vendor in this category) is Lily, our demo automation agent. Broadly, Lily helps in two ways: 

1. Easier, faster demo creation for sellers
2. Contextual demo discovery for buyers

Here’s a rundown of what you can do with Lily today:

• Create with AI: Generate or improve demos in seconds — complete with product-specific guides, prompt-based editing assistance, voiceovers, zooms, and more.
• AI Avatars: Pick from dozens of avatars or make one of yourself to generate studio-quality presenter videos. You have the option to manually record content in-app as well.
• AI HTML Editor: Customize HTML demo environments on the fly to meet ad hoc requirements. Edit text, images, and graphs with simple prompts — no code needed.
• AI Voiceovers / Translate: Choose from over 65+ voices (or record your own) and 25+ languages to expand accessibility and furnish your demos with a human touch.

As for discovery, think of Lily as a conversation product expert with as much information as your best sales person, available 24/7 to guide prospects through discovery and qualification. Coming soon.

Where’s Navattic at with all this? As it stands, they do not support any comparable features.

1.3 Demo Hub

Next up, we have Demo Hub: one of Storylane’s flagship features to address multiple buyer personas and use-cases in one place with galleries and playlists of demos. Galleries help marketers showcase a library of bite-sized product demos on their website (without overwhelming early stage prospects) while playlists help sales and presales teams share curated demo experiences with later stage prospects.

Navattic does not support any comparable feature to date. As it stands, Navattic’s response to Demo Hub is Demodash, an agency that charges as much as $2000 per demo to create demo centers for their customers.

1.4 Apps galore

Another key differentiator is Storylane's lineup of native apps. We’re the only demo automation vendors to support apps for Gmail, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Desktop (Mac).

• Try the Salesforce app, listed on the Salesforce AppExchange
• Try the HubSpot app, listed on the HubSpot marketplace
• Try the Gmail plugin
• Download the Storylane desktop app

These quality of life improvements are designed especially for sales teams to personalize and share demos without logging into Storylane (plus, easier change management is always nice).

You might be noticing a pattern here: To date, Navattic does not support this functionality — and given their focus on a limited set of use-cases, nor do we believe that they plan to. More on this next.

2. Versatility across GTM

Most demo automation vendors sell to a specific function. Saleo sells to sales. Consensus sells to pre-sales. And Navattic? Well they primarily sell to marketers. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it can be a limiting factor when you’re looking to scale demo operations across departments and use-cases. 

Storylane is specifically designed for horizontal adoption across marketing, pre-sales, sales, and even customer success, product, and development teams. The differences in product functionality highlighted above (coupled with under the radar features such as secure demo sharing and personalized links for email campaigns) are testament to this claim.

3. Ease of use

As for which demo automation software is easier to use, we’ll let numbers do the talking.

‍

"Storylane makes it much easier to organize content with its tagging system for chapters and sections. While Navattic allows labeling, it lacks searchability and filtering capabilities, which becomes crucial when managing multiple chapters. I particularly appreciate how Storylane structures chapters with their own dedicated build sections. In contrast, with Navattic, when I created an 80-step process, it stretched into one long, horizontal sequence that required constant scrolling back and forth. Storylane's more concise organization makes me much more excited to build out product demos” - A customer when asked about how Storylane compared to Navattic

4. Commercial models

Upon initial inspection, Storylane is (slightly) more expensive per plan than Navattic. A closer look, however, reveals that we offer several features in our lower tier plans. To name a few:

• Lily AI (Available in Storylane’s free plan onwards vs unavailable on Navattic)
• Account reveal (Available in Storylane’s $40/mo plan vs. Navattic’s $1000/mo plan)
• Demo translations (Available in Storylane’s $40/mo plan vs Navattic’s $1000/mo plan)
• Demo Hub (Available in Storylane’s $500/mo plan vs unavailable on Navattic)
• Offline demos (Available in Storylane’s $1200/mo plan vs. Navattic’s enterprise plan)
• Demo coaching (Available in Storylane’s $1200/mo plan vs. Navattic’s enterprise plan)

If you really think about it, this probably translates to better bang for your buck. But what about the whole “unlimited seats” deal? Sounds great, sure — but how sustainable is it really? As your organization (and demo requirements) start to scale, it’s unrealistic to expect the same support for a 5 seat plan as a 200 seat plan. Another reason why Storylane’s value-based pricing makes more sense for the long run. 

Edit: Recently, Navattic has also started capping their seats per plan. Goes to show that as a commercial model, the whole unlimited seats approach probably didn't work out as intended. 

And there you have it! Both Navattic and Storylane are leading demo automation softwares — but when you break it down, it’s hard to argue against the latter. Storylane's objectively in the clear for most buying considerations: functionality, versatility, ease-of-use, and commercials.

5. On innovation - What’s next?

It may not feel like it (especially to us), but demo automation has only been around for a handful of years. As a category, we’re still in nascent stages. Unlike with established verticals such as CRMs or project management tools, it’s on younger companies like ours to innovate and push the envelope in these “early days” of demo automation.

Nitty-gritty comparisons aside, it’s worth sharing that Storylane has been at the forefront of this since day one. With category-first initiatives like self-serve PLG, Demo Hub, and more recently, Lily AI — innovation continues to be at the heart of our business. If you decide to go with Storylane, we hope the question “what's next?” excites you as much as it excites us!

Related Reading

1.Best Navattic Alternatives For Every Demo Need