Demo Centers: Minding the Pre-sales Education Gap for SaaS Buyers
I led a condensed design sprint to help our team explore new ways to educate prospects and differentiate Tourial in a crowded demo-automation market. Using growth-driven UX tactics, we designed and tested a new interactive experience which led to a new upsell motion, shortened our sales cycle, and significantly increased website conversion.
The work became the foundation for a new upsell motion, shortened our sales cycle, and significantly increased website conversion.
My role
I led a modified design sprint with leaders across multiple teams, translated research into actionable concepts, and designed the buyer experience that became the foundation for our Demo Centers product.
Seeking Differentiation in a Crowded Space
At the start of 2023, Tourial faced two major challenges:
- Differentiating in an increasingly crowded demo-automation market
- Creating upsell pathways that could prove long-term value to investors
Demo Automation
G2's data showed Demo Automation emerging as the top new category for buyer traffic. We saw rising market interest, but also rising competition.
This helped justify a sprint focused solely on identifying a way to differentiate ourselves.
Aligning on What the Research Revealed We Needed to Solve
We consolidated user research into an affinity map and paired it with a rapid, cross-functional brainstorm. The goal was to align on the core problems, identify opportunities, and establish a shared direction for the sprint.
01Research
I consolidated interviews, FullStory sessions, and Sprig surveys into a single affinity map to surface patterns.
0215-minute "idea dump"
After presenting the research, I had the team cluster related findings and run a 15-minute individual idea dump.
03Now / Next / Later
We prioritized the ideas into a Now / Next / Later framework to focus the sprint on a realistic scope.
The team aligned on three key insights:
Interactive demos were still an immature part of a fragmented content strategy.
Personalization in demos could accelerate sales cycles.
SaaS vendors struggled to define an optimal buyer path due to multiple personas.
Converging on a Concept Worth Testing
We used the "Now" priorities to generate rapid sketches. Each team member produced their own concept, and we identified overlapping themes between them. This concept became the backbone of the design sprint.
01Identify intent
Buyers needed opportunity to share what their awareness level and intent was.
02Filter up content
Vendors should assign educational content to be filtered up according to buyer input.
03Package insights
Buyer intent would be packaged as data for marketing and sales teams to understand their buyers.
04Capture leads
We needed to be able to capture leads to help sales better deliver personalized outreach.
Pressure-Testing Three Concepts
I translated our Day 2 direction into six lo-fi prototypes and narrowed them to three for testing. Using Sprig, we ran an unmoderated study where users clicked through each concept, shared feedback in context, and selected the version they found most useful.
Content library first
Users could browse content with an option to "build a demo" based on their preferences through a survey on the right.
Personal filters first
Users could "fill in the blanks" on multiple dimensions, press "go", and the demo center would surface the most relevant content for them.
Guided survey first
Users could take a progressive disclosure survey which would generate a personalized sequence of content in return.
A clear preference
We collected feedback both in the form of text and surveys. Users strongly preferred Concept 3 over the others.
A Loss in Trust
The design we chose to compromise on did not resonate with our users. Most saw the end result didn't reflect their feedback. They were no longer willing to test with us.
Design education is one piece of maturing design in an organization. This ended up being a pivotal "learn by experience" moment at Tourial.
The Fail Fast Mentality
Leadership was receptive to the idea of making changes to their ideas based on session data. We launched the output of our design sprint on our own website, and I would iterate weekly until we had developed something to regain pilot user interest again.
Moving users down the funnel
I created a funnel to reflect the user journey towards conversions. As I observed user sessions, I tracked the data to see what impact each iteration had on the primary goal: conversions.
01Specificity feels personal
A broad content library lowered the sense of personalization and distracted visitors, which reduced the quality of intent data we could gather.
02Reciprocity really works
Users were more willing to share intent after receiving value first—in our case, after engaging with a piece of content.
03Create focus
Micro-animations and a minimal UI helped direct focus in a new interaction model, guiding users down the funnel instead of reverting to their usual browsing habits.
An Opinionated Builder Experience
We were able to re-engage our pilot users as we introduced changes accordingly. Which lead us to our second pitfall. Structuring their content around prompts to collect user intent felt like an insurmountable task for our time-strapped users.
Built in guidance
I designed a wizard experience which suggested themes and templated prompts when the user created a new module for content.
Minimalist builder
The demo center was fully templated so that once users completed building out their chapters and content tracks, it could be fully branded with just a few style settings.
New Pipeline and Upsell
50% of all pipeline opportunities were interested in the demo center. Demo centers immediately generated over $500k in upsell opportunities.
77% Increase in Conversions
The average conversion rate on a B2B website is notoriously low- ranging from 1-3%. Our pilot program saw a 77% increase in website conversions on pages where the demo center was embedded.
47% Decrease in Sales Cycle Length
Our sales team developed an internal use case for demo centers to use in outreach- they reported a 47% decrease in the time it took to close for potential buyers who viewed the demo center.