Ask HN: Is the online demo a good idea?

When I first launched my web application, I was convinced that an online demo was the key to convincing customers of its awesomeness. All I asked for was an email address, and the visitor had full access to a guest account. In fact, my main call to action was to try the demo.

I now speculate that online demos can be a bad idea.

1. People casually surfing to your site to learn more are like window-shoppers. You can't show them all your wares out on the sidewalk. They must be enticed to enter your store. And once they come in you don't want to show them the pile of stuff in the back; you want to lead them through a curated presentation of your best offerings.

My point is that focusing on an online demo might short-circuit the sales (seduction) process.

2. When a prospect enters your online demo, you lose control over their experience. Being confronted for the first time with a new UI, they will get overloaded.

You can't assume they will tell themselves: "this software lets me place orders - let me try to place one to see how it works..."

The prospect will actually get stuck somewhere or have questions about how it works, but since they're not invested in using your product yet they won't ask you. They'll just walk away on a sour note. And you won't know why.

3. Extra work

Setting up and maintaining a guest account can be a lot of extra work, with no measurable pay-off. I wanted to show some reporting capability, so I had to fudge tens of thousands of records and make the whole thing look decent. I suspect that time would have better spent cold-calling.