How to Choose What Your Demo Should Show
August 19, 2026
The hardest part of making a demo is not recording it. It is deciding what to record, and most people get this wrong in the same direction: they demo the feature they are proudest of.
That feature is usually the one that took longest to build, which is a fact about your engineering effort and not about your buyer.
Start from the question, not the feature
Every visitor arrives with an unspoken question. Usually a version of "can this actually do the thing I am struggling with?" Your demo has one job: answer that question faster than they expected.
So the first step is not choosing a feature. It is writing down the question, in the words your buyers actually use -- which means the words from your support inbox and your sales calls, not the words on your homepage.
Three places the answer is already written down
- Your sales call recordings. Whatever you find yourself showing at minute four, every time, is the demo. You have already tested it on live humans.
- Your support tickets. The question asked most often before purchase is the objection your demo should dissolve.
- Your own onboarding drop-off. The step where trial users stall is the step where a demo would have shown them what "good" looks like.
The "so what" test
Take your candidate flow and write one sentence describing what the viewer learns. Then ask "so what" of that sentence, honestly, as a stranger would.
"You can filter the table by date" -- so what. "You can see which vehicles lost money last month in two clicks" -- that is a demo. If your sentence survives one "so what", record it. If it needs three sentences of setup, pick something else.
Prefer the boring flow that closes deals
Products often have one unglamorous capability that quietly decides purchases -- an export, an integration, a permissions model. It is not exciting to build and it is frequently the thing a buyer needs to confirm before they can say yes.
That is a demo. It is short, specific, and removes a blocker. A tour of your beautiful dashboard removes nothing.
One demo per question, not one demo per product
When you cannot choose between three flows, that is usually the signal to make three demos rather than one long one. Each answers one question and can be sent to exactly the person asking it.
This is also how a demo becomes reusable in sales: a library of short, single-question demos is far more useful in a deal than one comprehensive walkthrough nobody can excerpt from.
Frequently asked questions
- What should my product demo show?
- The answer to the question your buyers actually arrive with, usually "can this do the thing I am struggling with". Find it in your sales call recordings, your pre-purchase support tickets, and the step where trial users stall -- not in your feature list.
- Should a demo cover my most impressive feature?
- Usually not. The feature you are proudest of is typically the one that took longest to build, which is a fact about your engineering rather than your buyer. An unglamorous capability that removes a purchase blocker makes a better demo.
- How do I know if a flow is worth demoing?
- Write one sentence saying what the viewer learns, then ask "so what" as a stranger would. If the sentence survives one "so what", record it. If it needs three sentences of setup first, choose something else.
Keep reading
This is what Demorta does
Click through it — the same kind of demo you can record of your own product.
Try it on your own product
Record your first interactive demo free.
Five demos on the free plan, forever. No credit card, no trial countdown, no sales call. Install the Chrome extension, click through your product once, and you have a shareable link in about ten minutes.
Start free →