Interactive Demo Glossary
August 22, 2026
The vocabulary around demos is inconsistent, and several terms mean different things depending on who is using them.
These are plain definitions, with the ambiguous ones flagged as ambiguous.
The formats
- Interactive demo — a captured copy of a real product a viewer clicks through themselves, with no account.
- Click-through demo — the same thing. The term emphasises how it is advanced.
- Clickable demo — also the same thing, and often confused with a clickable prototype, which is mockups in a design tool.
- Product tour — ambiguous. Online it usually means an interactive demo; in product teams it usually means an in-app overlay for logged-in users.
- Product walkthrough — the same artefact as a demo, with the emphasis on teaching rather than selling.
- Sandbox — a real, running instance of the product with seeded data that a prospect can log into.
- Demo environment — a dedicated instance used for demonstrating, kept separate from production.
How they are made
- Capture — recording your product, usually via a browser extension, one step per click.
- Screenshot capture — each step stored as an image. Works on anything, including canvas.
- HTML capture — each step stored as the page markup with scripts stripped, so text stays real text.
- Redaction — permanently destroying sensitive content in a captured step, as distinct from covering it.
- Demo account — an account with invented data, used for recording instead of a real one.
- Seeding — populating that account with plausible data before recording.
Parts of a demo
- Step — one captured screen with its caption and click point.
- Hotspot — the marker showing where to click on a step.
- Tooltip or caption — the text explaining what a step means.
- Guided mode — the viewer must click the real control to advance, rather than pressing Next.
- Branching — the demo asks a question and takes different paths based on the answer.
- Gate or lead capture — a form shown before, during or after the demo.
- Chapter — a named group of steps, so a viewer can skip to a section.
Measurement
- Drop-off — where viewers stop. The step-level version is the only demo metric that is directly actionable.
- Completion rate — the share who reach the end. Driven mostly by length and traffic source, so only meaningful against your own previous version.
- Cliff — one step where a large share leave at once, which usually means a gate, an unreadable screen, or a jump in context.
- Time to value — the gap between signup and a user's first real outcome.
- Activation — the single action a new user takes that predicts them staying.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between a product tour and an interactive demo?
- Online they are often used interchangeably. In product teams, a product tour usually means an in-app overlay shown to logged-in users, which requires code in your product, while an interactive demo is a capture shown to people before signup.
- What is a hotspot in a demo?
- The marker showing a viewer where to click on a given step. In guided mode the viewer has to click it to advance; otherwise it points at what the step is about.
- What does drop-off mean in demo analytics?
- Where viewers stop watching. Step-level drop-off is the only demo metric that is directly actionable, because a cliff at one step tells you exactly what to fix, unlike an overall completion percentage.
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