Add Instant Demo to Your SaaS
I've visited thousands of SaaS websites in the last few years.
I've visited Big-SaaS websites when featuring remote teams on my website Remote Hunt, and also Micro-SaaS websites when adding startups to MicroFounder.
Most describe their product through some sentences and illustrative screenshots.
And these screenshots are not usually directly from the SaaS but rather special drawings for the website that are meant to show the functionality in a simplified (beautified?) way.
But what I like is when you can try the SaaS without creating an account or even adding your email.
You just click the button and you're right inside.
This is what Refiner and Parabol do, for example. There's a button on their front page where you can go directly into their SaaS and try it out without signing up or anything.
So, Refiner is building a microsurvey tool and their demo lets you instantly understand what's it about – you see this little window popping up where you can answer simple questions as a SaaS user.
Parabol has taken the demo a step further – you click the button and you're inside their real product "holding a 2-minute retrospective meeting with our simulated colleagues."
They also have these classic illustrative SaaS screenshots on their site, but I'm not sure I would understand their product fully without the "instant demo" button.
I think it's always a good idea to add an "instant demo" for your SaaS if that's at all possible. But maybe sometimes it's not – maybe your SaaS is too big, complicated, or just too personal to demo in a generic way, but then it can be helpful to build a small interactive demo, which is not a real product but just a simplified version to convey the idea.
And when one-button-instant-demo is not at all possible, a video can be very helpful. Like CoScreen – a native app which can't be demoed in a web browser – has done a quick 80-sec video that shows the heart of the product.
The video is quick enough that I find the time to watch it through and understand that it's like a magic desktop where my coworkers can bring their windows.