_{Day 150/100 DAYUMMMMM. Getting there now.}

Hey—It's Tim. 

Twenty-one degrees. First time I’ve felt a breeze instead of a blow-torch in two weeks. I’m celebrating by typing this from the balcony

Interactive product demos are just PowerPoints with more steps

Interactive tours promise “hands-on.”
What they deliver is a slide deck wearing a wig.

• Crocs-level comfy for the maker, ugly for everyone else.

• Only 33 % of users finish them (Encharge).

• “Good” tours limp to 60 % (Chameleon).

• The average tour kidnaps 154 seconds of attention. Bounce-rate dog years.

Users smell the stage-craft by step two and smash the Skip button like it’s candy-crushable.

We have product demo's a home...

Remember car trips as a kid? You begged for McDonald’s. Dad said, “We’ve got food at home.”
An interactive tour is the SaaS equivalent of that sad homemade burger - dry bun, no toy.

Confession time: Penfriend ships with one of these Franken-demos. Six polite steps that solve exactly none of your problems. I wrote it. I hate it. Consider this my public shaming.

The fix (show, don’t tour)

• Build real product pages. Full‑bleed screenshots that walk the prospect through the key flows - no crop‑circles, no mystery.

• Drop a 2‑minute video. Captioned, scrub‑friendly, one job: prove value before the first yawn.

• Embed a bite‑sized sandbox. A mini version of the tool lives right on the page. Click it, use it, feel the payoff. The paid upgrade is more - never different.

• Measure and iterate. If the sandbox or video isn’t earning clicks, swap frames, not feelings.

My plan for rebuilding the site

Skip the faux tour. Your marketing site already holds three demo layers ready to work overtime:

1. Scrolling screenshots – tell the whole value story in annotated stills. Let visitors skim‑scroll and see how their job gets easier.

2. 90‑second “show, don’t tell” video – record a single real flow, start‑to‑finish, cursor and click sounds included. No breathless voice‑over dissertations.

3. Live micro‑widget – embed a stripped‑down slice of the product so prospects can push one button and hit the „aha“ feeling.

If a buyer can’t land that payoff in under a minute, the issue isn’t attention span - it’s framing. Build pages that demo themselves and the sign‑ups follow.

I’m ripping ours out this weekend. You in?

✌️ Tim "The only demo I’m interested in is demolition." Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. Got a fun deal coming on Monday. You’re gonna wanna keep your eyes on the inbox.

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.