This post covers the benchmarks needed to build world-class interactive demos that perform in the 99th percentile. The best of the best. Demos that get you the desired results you need to grow your business (more on that below).
If you’re looking for more general interactive demo statistics, or benchmarks for median performers, the top 25%, and the top 10%. 👈
Because you built demos for outcomes. Whether you:
What you care about is driving positive impacts on KPIs you care about.
The top 1% of demos convert at 8.38x the rate of the median interactive demo.
Let's illustrate an example to give you a sense of how much impact that can have on your business. Let’s say you’re a product-led company that drives product sign-ups from traffic on your website.
It’s now well-known that interactive web page demos drive more sign-ups. But the difference between an “okay” demo and a world-class one is staggering.
For this example’s sake:
After 12 months with a median demo, you will have generated → 720 sign-ups.
After 12 months with a median demo, you will have generated → 8,040 sign-ups!
Improving your demos could be the difference between flat and exponential growth for your business. Scroll down for benchmarks and ways to improve your demos ⤵️.
This is even more important, considering that best-in-class demos have higher completion rates (as seen below) and that it correlates with a higher likelihood of taking multiple activation steps in onboarding.
In a nutshell, → Better demos = More high-quality conversions that turn into lifelong paid customers.
First, we analyzed 37,000 Arcades built across 9000+ teams and companies.
Second, we looked at research done by other industry players, such as Navattic and HowdyGo (sources at the end of this post).
❗The benchmarks listed below are for the top 1% of demos. Check out more interactive demo statistics.
Play rate → 98%
Play rate = % of interactive demo viewers who get past the first step in your demo.
Completion rate → 100%
Completion rate = % of viewers who reach the final step in your interactive demo.
CTR → 67%
CTR = click-through rate = % of viewers who take action (click on a call-to-action button).
Minutes watched → 3.52m
Minutes watched = time spent by someone actively engaging with your demo.
Video CTR → 3.21% (industry average)
Video CTR = Click-through rate from video assets.
Demo CTR → 67%
Here’s an example from Quantum Metrics 👇
Link to the full article on video vs interactive demos.
Spending more time on a product tour doesn’t equal better results.
In fact:
Head to Insights in Arcade to view how your demos stack against the top 1%. 👇
💡 These benchmarks highlight “ideal” data points, offering guidance on what great demos often share in common. However, they’re not strict rules. Some exceptional demos don’t align perfectly with these metrics, and context matters. Ultimately, the best demos are those that deliver the most value to customers, not the ones that simply meet a checklist. Use these benchmarks as inspiration, not as absolutes!
Here’s a 12-step Arcade demo from Hunter 👇
Chapters let viewers pick what they want to do next. Adding an intro chapter to an interactive demo increases the play rate by 72%.
Here’s an example 👇
People’s attention span is short. Too much text creates drop-offs.
Although adding a bunch of CTAs for prospects to choose from may be tempting, it doesn’t correlate with a higher CTR.
What can be done is add multiple paths for viewers who do not want to convert on your “direct” CTAs, like this example ⤵️
Out of the top 1% of demos:
In 80% of the top-performing demos, we can observe advanced effects like Pan & Zoom 👇
Branching paths are presented to viewers once they click on a chapter, so that the content of the demo changes based on chapter clicks. Here’s an example 👇
Sources ⤵️
