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How to create effective product tours that users will love‍.

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Product tours (or product walkthroughs) introduce new users to apps by giving them the lay of the land. You can think of them like interactive tutorials—they help users get comfy with your UI while guiding them to the core processes that bring value to your product. Great product tours set users up for long-term engagement and increase the odds of product activation , product adoption , and user retention .

If you want to keep new users as customers, your product has to work seamlessly from the start —and there’s no better retention mechanism than a stellar product tour.

What is a product tour?

A product tour is a guided walkthrough of a product or service, typically presented to users after they sign up or first log in. Product tours are used to onboard new users, introduce them to a product's key features and value, and help them get started using it. They’re different from product demos , which intend to show a custom solution to a specific user need.

Why use a product tour?

You should expect adopting any new software to come with a bit of a learning curve. A product tour helps users navigate this friction while promptly revealing an app’s important value-laden features. Good tours walk a tightrope between annoying users with over-engagement and frustrating users with under-assistance.

They act as a guided tour for new customers learning how to use your SaaS product for the first time. Product tours:

• Compel users to take specific, meaningful actions in your app. Instead of leaving users to figure out your app on their own, product tours influence user behavior by explaining why each step is important and guiding users to take critical actions within your product.
• Guide users toward their aha moment. An aha moment is when users first realize the value that your product provides. Users who stumble upon their aha moment understand how your product improves their work (or life). This isn't always something they'll discover on their own—but a product tour makes that discovery process a heck ton easier.
• Can be simple to build and experiment with. ‍Tools like Appcues allow you to create or amend a product tour without making software changes within your app. This makes experimenting with your onboarding process a breeze and quickly uncovers what resonates with your users.

ONBOARD SMARTER

Ready to tour appcues' product tour software.

• Use in-app guides to educate users
• Increase activation with personalized flows
• Drive feature adoption to improve stickiness

10 tips for building successful product tours

Every product has different features, and every user has different needs—that’s why effective product tours look different for every app. That being said, here are 10 best practices for designing a great product tour that moves users through your flywheel and onto the next stage in their journey.

• Be sequential : Don't just show users a random collection of tooltips without any clear structure. Each step in your product tour should be clearly defined, and each step should move users further down the path to activation.
• Focus on the core value : Explaining every little feature will only lead to frustrated and annoyed users. Make sure you're only highlighting necessary features users need to experience your product's core value to keep them truckin' along to their aha moment. (You can always introduce additional features later.)
• Keep things short and sweet : New users are keen to get started using your app. Respect their time by making sure your tour is brief. Unnecessary steps add unnecessary friction to the onboarding process. Less is more—and three to five steps are usually plenty for an onboarding flow.
• Provide clear next steps : The best product tours clearly explain the next step a user should take. How do they begin adding their data? Do they need to sign up for a paid subscription first? Users can’t take the next step without first knowing where to start, so show them!
• Make sure to provide further help : A successful product tour will improve customer success. This means you must stay on top of users’ progress with your product features. Provide links to additional content, interactive guides, and access to real-time customer support as they continue to explore your app. And let them know where they can go to find the product tour if they need to walk through a step again.
• Personalization is key: Think of your product tour as a personal guide tailored to each user's needs. It's not about one-size-fits-all—it's about fitting like a glove. Segment your tours based on user roles or behaviors. This way, a newbie gets the beginner's introduction, while the seasoned user gets the advanced tips. It’s like having a personal shopper—they know just what you need.
• Keep your tours up-to-date: Your app evolves, and so should your product tours. Regularly review how your tours are performing. Are users dropping off at a certain point? Maybe that step is the equivalent of a party guest who overstays their welcome. Update and tweak your tours based on user feedback and engagement data. It's like keeping your playlist fresh—nobody wants to hear last year's hits at this year's party.
• Monitor user engagement: Keep an eye on how users interact with your product tours. Use analytics to understand where they find value and where they don’t. Think of it as being a good host at a party—you want to make sure everyone's having a good time, and if they’re not, you change the music.
• Constantly seek feedback: Encourage users to give feedback on your product tours. It's like asking your guests for their favorite dessert recipes—it helps you serve up exactly what they want next time. This input can be invaluable in refining and improving the user experience.
• Offer a ‘skip’ option: Not everyone wants the grand tour. Some users might want to dive right in. Respect their familiarity and confidence with a ‘skip tour’ option. It’s like offering a self-service buffet alongside a sit-down meal. Everyone gets to enjoy their experience in their own way. Plus, this flexibility can prevent user frustration and keep the experience positive.

Andrew Capland , PLG Advisor and Growth Leader, gives us a bit of insight into how he's structured product tours:

"The main challenge with product tours is that most display 1x (usually when the page/feature loads for the first time) and then disappear forever. That's challenging because many users want to explore on their own first - then have guidance later. With that in mind, I've found the best tours can be minimized and then viewed when the user is ready. Ideally, combined with a checklist or "getting started" page. Something that provides help when they need it - on their terms."

While there's no one-size-fits-all best product tour format, there are best use cases for onboarding flow design patterns ; using UI patterns like tooltips, hotspots, and modal windows engages users and educates them on how to use your product.

Types of product tours

Crafting an engaging product tour is a bit like hosting a lively party—every element should spark interest, guide your guests, and make them feel right at home—and remember, variety is key. Here’s a roundup of the different UI patterns you can mix and match for your product tour. Think of these as your party essentials, each bringing its unique flair to the event!

• Pop-ups: Pop-ups are like those friendly neighborhood billboards, popping up at the right moment to highlight the good stuff. They range from simple splash screens to modal windows demanding a bit of action. Think of them as your app's way of saying, "Hey, check this out!" They're quick, effective, and get the message across without much fuss.
• Interactive walkthroughs: Imagine having a savvy friend guide you through a new city. That's what interactive walkthroughs do for your app. They're like personal tour guides for users, showing them the ropes step-by-step, making even the most complex processes feel like a walk in the park.
• Hotspots: Hotspots are the subtle nudges in your app that say, "Psst, look here." These little beacons of wisdom draw users to specific points, perfect for highlighting updates or tucked-away features. They're like the hidden gems of your app, waiting to be discovered.
• Tooltips: Tooltips are the whisperers of the app world. They hover around, offering nuggets of wisdom about features or elements, without pushing users to act. They're there to inform and enlighten, offering insights in bite-sized pieces.
• Explainer videos: Combine the charm of a good story with the clarity of a demonstration, and you get explainer videos. They're like mini-movies for your app, greeting new users with a visual feast that walks them through your app's coolest features.
• Task lists: These are your app's to-do lists, guiding users through tasks with a clear sense of direction and purpose. They're like breadcrumbs leading to the heart of your app, ensuring users don't miss out on anything important.
• Progress bars: Like mile markers on a road trip, progress bars show users how far they've journeyed in your app and how much more adventure lies ahead. They're a visual pat on the back, encouraging users to keep going and explore all that your app offers.

No matter the mix, the aim is the same: engaging users in a journey of discovery through your app. It's about making learning interactive, fun, and effective for all types of users.

How to choose the right UI pattern for your product tour

Selecting the right UI pattern for your product tour is like picking the right music for your party—it sets the tone and keeps the vibe just right. Here’s how to ensure you’re making the best choice for your users:

Assess your app’s complexity

Just like a complex dish needs more detailed instructions, a complex app requires more comprehensive guidance. If your app is a multi-layered lasagna, packed with features and intricacies, you'll need a full-on guided tour to help users digest it all. But if it's more like a simple, yet elegant bruschetta, a few tooltips or hotspots might suffice. 

Below you’ll see how Zenefits uses a blend of modal windows and tooltips to smoothly guide users through its HR platform. It’s a perfect example of matching the tour complexity with the app's nature.

Know your audience

Just as a good host knows their guests' tastes, understand who your users are. Are they digital natives who navigate apps like a fish in water? Or are they folks who might need a bit more hand-holding? 

It's important to match the UI pattern you choose with the needs of your users and the requirements of your app. More complex apps might require more targeted onboarding guidance , while straightforward apps might only require basic tips.

You should also think about your users' motivation. How likely are they to complete a more extensive product tour? How tech-savvy are they? It's important to empathize with users as you choose which UI pattern to apply to your product tour.

These are the 3 most popular UI patterns for building product tours :

If your users are like tech-savvy partygoers, a light touch with hotspots or brief tooltips, much like Asana's "Add New" button highlight, could be the way to go. 

For those who are more like first-time guests in the digital world, consider a more structured approach with interactive walkthroughs or even explainer videos. Remember, it's all about making your guests feel at home.

Align UI patterns with user motivation

Think of this as choosing the right music for your party. How engaged are your users likely to be? Are they ready for a deep-dive tour, or would they prefer the highlights? This is where you gauge the room's mood. 

If your users are eager learners, ready to explore every nook and cranny of your app, then a detailed tour with progress bars or task lists might be the ticket. But if they're only popping in for a quick visit, a simple tooltip or a brief explainer video might be the better choice. It's about reading the room and adjusting the volume accordingly.

3 amazing product tour examples

There’s no better way to level up your product tour game than looking at great examples in action. Here are several of the best IRL product tour examples and product walkthroughs that set the bar for what you can achieve.

Personal finance management app Mint built its product tour to guide users through a lengthy setup process that involves everyone’s favorite task: typing in sensitive personal information. Mint uses tooltips to make what would otherwise be a thorny starting process a cinch.

After entering their email address, Mint asks users to add all of their bank accounts. Mint knows that most people don’t enjoy tracking down all of their financial information and giving it to a private company, so they include a reassuring sidebar on the right side of the screen to build trust with users. The sidebar includes a checklist of the steps required to get started, while including blurbs highlighting its dedication to security and the trust of its millions of clients.

After that, Mint liberally uses tooltips to point out the most important features within the app. The tooltips employ bold colors to contrast against the rest of the UI. It also includes CTAs and options for more information for users who want to engage with the feature immediately. For everyone else, the “Next Tip” button stands out brightly against the dark gray tooltip.

Mint’s tooltips also employ the use of gentle animations to further draw attention to its onboarding tips.

HR platform Zenefits uses a combination of modal windows and tooltips to acquaint users with its app. Its product tour funnels users to a demo version of its platform that allows them to learn about and engage with important features before venturing off on their own.

First, Zenefits uses modal windows for users to input the information required to get started.

Another modal window then informs the user that they’ll be working inside a demo version of the software. It also uses this as an opportunity to have users review its Terms and Privacy policy.

From here, Zenefits guides users from function to function with the use of tooltips. The tooltips point directly to the features mentioned in the copy. The product walkthrough thoughtfully includes a “Back” button within each tooltip in the event a user accidentally hits the “Next” button.

Zenefits also grays out the area behind the tooltip and feature to emphasize the feature’s location within the UI.

Product tours should stay short to retain users’ attention, but sometimes complex products require more guidance. Enterprise software company Zuora bills itself as an “all-in-one” solution. It offers a full stack of subscription management tools to stand out from competitors. Users must understand how to work every tool in its stack to see the full benefit of the product. This means its product tour runs long by most standards.

Zuora solves this problem through the smart use of modal windows. Early in the product tour, new users select whether their interest in the app concerns “Product & Growth” or “Finance & Accounting.” This allows Zuora to immediately introduce users with targeted in-app messaging to the features that brought them to the product in the first place.

Zuora uses tooltips as the framework for most of its product tour. Too many tooltips will disengage readers and can lead to customers clicking “Next” without reading anything. Zuora throws in a few action-driven tooltips to prevent this from happening:

It wraps up its lengthy product tour with a modal window congratulating the user. This final modal contains a video that allows curious users to find more helpful information on how to use the product to get results. Users who’ve seen enough can click the “Done” button in the bottom right corner.

4 best product tour software to consider

There are plenty of free, paid, and open-source tools to build modal windows, tooltips, and more for your product tour or walkthrough. It's great to have options, but the reality for most SaaS companies is that building your own product tour from scratch isn't cost-effective . This rings especially true once you factor in the costs of maintenance and iteration. Instead, consider using dedicated tour-building software to build your product tours. Such platforms are usually more efficient, easier to use, and less expensive in the long run than their alternatives.There are many platforms out there that can help you build a user-friendly product tour, including:

Of course, we're biased! But Appcues has nearly a decade of experience in the product tour space. Companies like Amplitude, Heap, and Hotjar use Appcues to enhance their user onboarding and product experience. Its easy-to-use tour builder allows you to create pleasing walkthroughs without getting bogged down in coding. Tooltips, slideouts, hot tips, and modal windows can all be constructed in Appcues and implemented across tours and flows. It’s the premier tool for companies looking to enhance their product tours or build their first one from scratch.

Consider Appcues for its:

• Array of UI patterns
• Easy installation
• Code-free tracking and powerful analytics
• Many integration options, including Salesforce, Slack, and Mixpanel
• Mobile app support

Check out this step-by-step guide to creating interactive product tours in Appcues quickly and efficiently.

Pendo allows you to create product tours across your website and mobile apps. Its UI pattern toolbox includes banners and lightboxes to add flavor to your walkthroughs. Its analytics functionality is powerful and works well for product managers whose interest in analytics capabilities exceeds their need to improve the user experience.

Userpilot is another popular option for product tours. You can build tooltips, checklists, and more using its no-code builder. Userpilot backs its tour-building features with analytics tools to help segment users and test flows for optimized performance, though these features are not as robust as some of its competitors.

Level up your product tours

Remember that no one experience fits every customer’s needs. Just like your product, your tour should evolve based on user feedback and changing needs. Your returning customers, for example, will appreciate tours that recognize their familiarity, offering them new insights instead of a repetitive run-through.

The key to a successful product tour is continuous improvement. You’re in the unique position of knowing your product intimately, but stepping outside that familiarity is crucial, and seeing the tour through your users' eyes is even more crucial. 

Use tools like A/B testing, usability tests, microsurveys, and product metrics to fine-tune your approach. This isn’t only about making your tour better—it’s about making it the best it can be for every user, every time.

And if you’re hungry for more insights on crafting standout product experiences, we’ve got just the thing. Dive into our collection of wisdom with 20 Proven Strategies for Creating More Impactful Product Experiences . This guide is your next step towards mastering the art of engaging and effective product tours. 

Customers returning to your product after some time away won’t want to watch a full-fledged product tour again. It’s worth creating different product tours for unique user segments to provide more personalized and pleasing UX.

And one final piece of advice: test your product tours thoroughly. You and your team know your product inside and out, so your experiences with your product are inherently biased. Employ A/B testing, usability tests, micro surveys, and track product metrics to optimize your tour experience and balance between being helpful without being obtrusive.

How do I make a product tour?

Creating a product tour is like crafting a story—it needs a beginning, middle, and end. Start by identifying the key features and functionalities you want to showcase. Use a tool like Appcues to build the tour without heavy coding. Keep it interactive, simple, and focused on delivering value. Test it out, gather feedback, and don’t be afraid to iterate.

How effective are product tours?

Product tours can be incredibly effective if done right. They're like the friendly neighborhood guide who helps new residents settle in. A well-designed tour can boost user engagement, increase product adoption, and reduce time-to-value. However, their effectiveness hinges on their relevance, brevity, and clarity.

How do you improve a product tour?

Improving a product tour is like tuning a musical instrument—it requires attention and regular adjustments. Use analytics to understand where users drop off or engage the most. Personalize the tour for different user segments, and always allow for feedback. Keep the content updated, and ensure that the tour aligns with your product's new features.

What are product tour trends to watch?

Some product tour trends to keep an eye on include increased personalization, the use of AI and machine learning for more dynamic tours, integration of multimedia elements like videos and animations, and the rise of mobile-friendly tours. Also, watch for more immersive experiences, like augmented reality tours, as technology evolves.

What is a product walkthrough?

A product walkthrough is a step-by-step guided tour within an application, designed to familiarize users with its main features and functionalities. It's like having a knowledgeable friend walk you through a new device, ensuring you know all the cool things it can do and how to use them.

What is a feature tour?

A feature tour focuses specifically on showcasing the features of a product. It's more detailed and feature-centric than a general product tour. Think of it as a highlight reel for your app, spotlighting each feature with explanations and demonstrations, helping users understand and utilize your product’s capabilities to the fullest.

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15 Best Product Tour Software Tools & Solutions to Improve Your In-App UX

User onboarding is your time to shine! Find a tool that works best for you among these fifteen top-notch software solutions, and use it to increase product adoption and drive growth.

Have you ever been so frustrated with an app or product that you’ve exited and never returned? You’re not alone. 90% of users say they’ve left an app because of its poor UX. 

It’s essential to ensure your users don’t become part of that 90%. But how ? Well... Product tours are an excellent place to start.

By using the right product tour software, you can provide new and old users with the best experience possible and ensure they’re maximizing the value of your tool. You’ll also:

Impress users and fight churn

Help users reach their “aha!” moment

Encourage new feature adoption

Improve user onboarding

Provide a first-rate user experience

Boost customer satisfaction and retention

Among these fifteen top-notch product tour software solutions, you can find a tool that works best for you and use it to ease decision fatigue, gather user feedback, and reduce time to value.

Overview of the product tour software we'll dissect

Browse through the fifteen product software tools and use the jump links in the left side bar to skip to the ones that take your fancy.

How to find the right product tour software

Finding the right product tour software for you means knowing what to look out for. There are a number of key capabilities you should consider when evaluating tools.

Make sure the product walkthrough tool is easy to use

There’s little point in a tool you don’t know how to use. 

Consider ease of implementation. You wouldn’t want to wait weeks, or even months, to start using your product tour solution. You want a solution that’s easy to set up and configure. 

Consider how much coding knowledge you need to get started — if any. Product tour software should let you make changes quickly and easily without needing development support. 

Search for a solution that you and your team find easy to understand. Otherwise, you may spend more time learning to use the software than implementing it to improve your offerings.

Consider how easy it is to: 

Navigate through the platform 

Build and customize tours

Gather feedback

...And anything else you may need to do

Evaluate based on core product tour capabilities

There are some key features you need to identify in your product tour software . These features are essential to building and implementing engaging product tours.

Audience segmentation: Whether you want to create onboarding tours for new users or advanced feature tours for existing customers, you need a tool that lets you build and customize step-by-step tours that fit the specific needs of different user segments.

Versatility: You need to be able to add various forms of in-app guides, whether it’s through in-line help, modals, banners, in-product widgets, or onboarding checklists. These help you provide additional guidance at key steps.

Continuity: Setting up a product tour isn’t a one-and-done task. You want a tool that enables you to continuously collect user feedback at any stage of their journey, and then iterate and improve.

These features empower you to build a comprehensive product experience for your users. 

Which features are must-haves for your business?

Choosing the right product tour software means focusing on features that meet your unique requirements. If specific capabilities like user segmentation, rate limiting, A/B testing , or scheduling are key, then make sure your chosen tool has that functionality. 

Here are some must-have features most businesses should look out for:

Code-free customization: A no-code platform is essential for quick and efficient tour building and styling. This also ensures stress-free implementation, without having to rely on developers.

Event-based triggers: The best product tour tools respond to user actions in real-time, rather than simply running them through predefined steps. This event-based dynamic leads to a more engaging and helpful user experience.

A/B testing: Being able to test and compare different elements of a product tour is key to knowing what users prefer and what will keep them engaged.

Fair pricing: While some companies’ pockets are deeper than others, no one should overspend or be forced into a wasteful pricing tier. Look for a vendor that has a fair, transparent pricing structure to ensure you’re getting the right value for your investment.

Seamless integrations: Always consider how the tool integrates with your existing tech stack, and how it fits into your current workflow. For instance, you might want your product tour software to share data with your CRM or web analytics tools.

Ensure the customization capabilities match your expectations

Another thing you want to look out for is customization and personalization options for onboarding UX/UI elements. This refers to how easily you’re able to modify the in-product experience as per your needs — think font, color, branding, placement, size, and more.

You want software that helps you build native-looking product tours to avoid a disconnect between your brand and the in-app support you offer. 

This is also known as a white-label tool. A good tool lets you build product experiences that reflect your brand and company.

Know you'll have the right level of support for your team

Last, but by no means least, find a tool that offers comprehensive support for your team and skill-level. 

A vast majority of product tour platforms will claim to have incredible support, but that’s sometimes far from the truth.

Check out user reviews before making your final decision. They’ll give you a more accurate understanding of a tools’ support team. 

If reviews are consistently negative, then consider looking into another option. You don’t want to be left in the dark after investing in a new product experience tool; you need a team looking out for your ongoing success.

On platforms like G2, you can also filter reviews by topic. This lets you dig deeper into specific aspects of the tool, from customer service capabilities to feature functionality. It’s a key step in your tool evaluation process. Give this a try with G2 reviews for Chameleon .

Now that you know what you’re looking for, let’s dive into the top fifteen tools you can consider for creating tours that will keep your users coming back for more.

Top 15 product tour software solutions that empower your users

Product tour software is key to taking your product tours to the next level — but, how do you ensure yours are top-tier? 

With a powerful tool, that’s how. 

We’ve evaluated the top tools so you don’t have to and looked into the pros and cons of each to provide a comprehensive overview. Get ready to increase customer satisfaction and make creating product tours a breeze with these fifteen product tour software options.

1. Chameleon

Choose Chameleon if you're looking for broad styling options, advanced user segmentation, A/B testing, scheduling options, tour performance analytics, and integrations with your existing tools

Chameleon works with single-page apps and other browser-based web apps, but not with native mobile applications, so if you have a mobile app, Chameleon isn’t going to be the best choice for you

Chameleon is a no-code user onboarding software and a Product Adoption Platform that helps you guide users through any step of their product journey. 

It’s one tool to manage all product engagements within your web app — from onboarding tours to highly customizable in-product widgets and product surveys.

Chameleon's features

Core product features include: 

Tours: Use banners, modals, hotspots, and more to announce changes or guide users with interactive walkthroughs.

Tooltips: Easily deploy in-app messages wherever your users need a helping hand, without pulling on your engineering or coding resources.

Launchers: Use in-product widgets to apply checklists or help menus to deepen user engagement and aid feature discovery.

Microsurveys: Get continuous feedback on your user experience to build a better product and adoption process. Share this feedback across your other tools using Chameleon’s API .

Additional features include:

Chameleon Builder: Quickly build and update product tours with a WYSIWYG editor with point-and-click selection for exact tour placement and instant deployment.

Customized styling: Using advanced styling options and custom CSS, you can customize the attributes of your steps, and add up to the custom branding.

Chameleon Dashboard: Chameleon automatically collects data and creates tour performance dashboard reports. You can also integrate Chameleon with product analytics tools for more comprehensive insights.

B2B SaaS, product-led companies, and medium and larger organizations

Chameleon pricing: 

Chameleon offers a 14-day free trial , plus three pricing plans.

HelpBar: Free

Startup: From $279/month

Growth: From $849/month

Enterprise: Get in touch for details

Chameleon is the ideal solution for creating fully interactive tours that engage your users with both core and advanced features. You can get a demo to learn more.

Pros of using Chameleon for product tours:

With broad styling options and advanced user segmentation, you can create highly customized and effective product tours without knowing how to code

Easily measure the performance and impact of product tours with in-depth analytics and A/B testing capabilities

Cons of using Chameleon for product tours:

Without native mobile application support, Chameleon is limited to web-based platforms

The platform may be overly complex for small businesses with simpler needs, given its extensive features and customization

Here’s what customers are saying about Chameleon on G2:

“Chameleon is a great tool and a great partner! They have a world class team that is extremely knowledgeable and helpful. The tool has a wide range of features and it is clear they really care about building the best solution to help product and growth teams unlike what is on the market. We were able to implement and integrate with our existing stack easily.” — Elyssa S

“Chameleon's intuitive no-code platform has been a game-changer for our SaaS product. The user segmentation and interactive walkthroughs have significantly improved our user onboarding experience. The onboarding checklists and tooltips are not just helpful; they have transformed the way we guide new users through our application, enhancing feature adoption seamlessly. It's incredibly user-friendly and the self-service aspect empowers our team to create custom solutions without always needing technical assistance.” — Anas B.

Choose Pendo for user onboarding behavioral analytics and user sentiment analysis, as well as for employee onboarding and productivity analysis

If you’re just starting out or you run a team in a small-sized company, Pendo might not be the best fit for you

Pendo is a product adoption platform that helps you deliver product experiences through a number of solutions, from user onboarding to product planning and more.

Pendo's features

Core product tour features include:

In-app guides: Deploy guides to deliver a personalized experience for your users.

Behavioral analytics: Dive into product analysis to find out how different types of users engage with your product.

Feedback: Gather user feedback with in-app polls and surveys.

Additional features include: 

Roadmapping: Coordinate your team around one central planning roadmap and create specific role-based roadmaps.

Sentiment analysis: Understand how users feel about your product.

Medium and enterprise companies

Pendo pricing: 

Pendo offers a free plan with limited features and two paid plans.

Basic: Free

Growth: Custom pricing

Portfolio: Custom pricing

To find out more about the specifics — like total monthly cost — you’ll need to contact the team.

Pros of using Pendo:

Offers detailed view of user activity and emotional states, with behavioral and sentiment analysis

All-in-one platform provides access to a broad range of tools including session replay, in-app guides, and product validation

Cons of using Pendo:

Less suitable for smaller teams, with custom pricing for paid plans that lack transparency

Extensive features and tools can be overwhelming to new users, with a steep learning curve

Choose Appcues if you need click tracking and data visualizations to understand how users interact with your product tours

If you’re looking to build complex flows that look totally on-brand Appcues might not be the best choice; independent reviews discuss reliability issues

Appcues enables you to build personalized product experiences that span from adoption to retention.

Appcues features

Core features include:

User onboarding: Reduce time to value and guide users to their “aha!” moment.

Feature adoption: Use in-app announcements and guides to meet users where they are.

Insights: Roll out simple click tracking and data visualizations to help understand how users interact with your product.

Custom surveys: Employ drag and drop images, videos, questions, and form fields to get key feedback.

Appcues studio: Manage flows, events, and experiences in a centralized dashboard.

Small and medium-sized businesses

Appcues pricing: 

Appcues offers a 14-day free trial for users. Then you have a choice of three plans.

Essentials: From $299/month

Growth: From $879/month

Enterprise: Custom pricing

The price goes up with active users, meaning you’ll pay more as you grow .

Pros of using Appcues:

Learn how customers use your product via click tracking and data visualizations

Gain insight across your customer lifecycle, from onboarding to ongoing use and retention

Cons of using Appcues:

Falls short for those needing advanced analytics and deeper insights into user behavior

Costs increase as your user base grows, which may complicate forecasting for fast-growing companies

Choose WalkMe if you're a large company dealing with enterprise customers with low monthly active users

If you want product tour software options for actually driving adoption among a growing number of end-users, WalkMe might not be the best fit for you

WalkMe is one of the earliest digital adoption platforms. While it’s a comprehensive solution, it lacks flexibility, customizability, as well as many other things needed in a modern product tour software — like deep integrations.

WalkMe's features

Product tours: Utilize run-of-the-mill product tours for on-screen guidance.

Microsurveys: Create in-product surveys to collect user feedback.

Checklists: Offer onboarding checklists to your users.

Tooltips: Create tooltips for additional in-app guidance.

Product analytics: WalkMe also offers tools that could be considered as advanced analytics if you're a non-tech firm.

Enterprise-level businesses, and non-tech companies

WalkMe pricing: 

You’ll need to contact the team to get a quote, but, can access a free demo.

Pros of using WalkMe:

Simple and reliable tool that’s ideal for large B2B companies

Offers essential features like product tours, microsurveys, checklists, and tooltips

Cons of using WalkMe:

Not the best choice for companies with a fast-growing user base, due to limited flexibility and customization

Lacks several modern capabilities, such as deep integrations, making it less suitable for tech-savvy businesses

5. Userpilot

Choose Userpilot if you want to track user engagement goals with goal completion analysis

If you run an enterprise-level company, Userpilot might not be the choice for you

Userpilot is a user engagement tool designed to facilitate every stage of the user journey. It offers no-code, in-product experiences built to drive user activation, feature adoption, and customer retention.

Userpilot's features

In-app experiences: Guide your users through your product and its features.

Engagement goals: Establish and track your user engagement goals with goal completion analysis.

User segmentation: Create role-specific tips for users based on their persona or in-app behavior.

In-app growth experiments: Use simple A/B testing to easily check your hypotheses with no developer support.

In-app surveys: Design or choose from a selection of templates for gathering contextual feedback.

Userpilot pricing: 

Userpilot offers three pricing plans.

Traction: From $249/month

Growth: From $499/month

Enterprise: From $1,000/month

Pros of using Userpilot:

Detailed goal tracking and engagement analytics, with personalized tooltips and user segmentation

Features and capability are suited to the needs of small to medium-sized businesses

Cons of using Userpilot:

Less suitable for large enterprises, with a focus on solutions for smaller companies

If you want your product tours to look close to native; you might run into limitations

6. Product Fruits

Choose Product Fruits if you’re looking for a cost-effective product tour solution with a knowledge base builder

If you need more sophisticated and advanced features for your onboarding flows, Product Fruits might not fit your needs

Product Fruits provides the tools you need to solve your software adoption problems. Product Fruits enables you to meet your users' needs from onboarding to providing contextual self-service.

Product Fruits' features

Onboarding solutions: Create guided tours and onboarding checklists for new users.

Contextual support: Highlight new features, give tips and tricks, and deliver release notes in-product.

Feedback widget: Enable users to report bugs using videos and screenshots.

Additional features:

Help center: Page-specific support that you can customize for each page.

Knowledge base builder: Create a knowledge base to support onboarding.

Product Fruits pricing: 

Product Fruits offers two pricing options:

Growing: From $79/month 

The platform also offers a 14-day free trial, so you can get to grips with the product before making your final decision.

Pros of using Product Fruits:

Lower price point compared to alternatives, making it cost-effective for smaller teams

Impressive array of features for its price, including product tours, contextual support, and a feedback widget

Cons of using Product Fruits:

Lacks features suited larger or more bespoke businesses, such as advanced customization

Limited integration with third-party tools, which can be challenging for companies with large tech stacks

7. Lou Assist

Choose Lou Assist if you’re looking for a tool with a free plan, and you want to track adoption metrics for behavior data insights 

If you run a bigger team or an enterprise, Lou Assist might not be your best choice

Lou Assist is a digital adoption platform that streamlines user onboarding and training through product tours and in-platform experiences. It’s a lesser-known tool than some big names on our list, but it still packs the necessary punch to create comprehensive tours.

Lou Assist's features

User onboarding: Create on-brand onboarding experiences with no code required.

Feature adoption: Use the platform to guide users through new features.

Announcements: Announce new features and provide additional information.

Analytics: Track your goals and understand user behavior with feature adoption metrics.

Lou Assist pricing: 

Lou Assist offers four different plans, including a free plan that offers limited capabilities. The other three plans are:

Startup: $99/month

Growth: $199/month

Enterprise: From $299/month

You’d pay a fixed rate for a set amount of monthly active users. But once you get to 10,000+ monthly active users, your costs increase per active user.

Pros of using Lou Assist:

User-friendly, no-code solution to create interactive onboarding experiences, with analytics to measure effectiveness

Offers a free plan and scalable pricing, making it an affordable option for growing businesses

Cons of using Lou Assist:

Features might not satisfy the needs of larger enterprises looking for deeper customization and advanced capabilities

With its focus on web-based platforms, Lou Assist isn't suitable for companies that need onboarding tools for mobile applications

8. Userflow

Choose Userflow if you’re looking for a budget-friendly tool for your SMB

Userflow might not be the best choice for you if you need to connect your product tours with other analytics tools or trigger next actions; they are lacking in integrations

Userflow is a user onboarding software that lets you build customized and dynamic step-based flows. It offers insights and analytics to track users and how they progress through your onboarding process.

Userflow's features

Element selection: Identify elements in your app based on simple text.

Automated triggers: Perform actions based on user clicks.

Onboarding checklists: Users can complete and check off tasks during their onboarding.

Resource center: Let users access resources directly in your product.

Event tracking: Set up event trackers to analyze users’ experience on your site.

Userflow pricing: 

Userflow offers three pricing levels.

Startup: $250/month

Pro: $750/month

It also offers a 14-day free trial, as well as a demo for those interested in learning more about the platform. 

Pros of using Userflow:

Good range of features for small to medium-sized businesses, including automated triggers and user surveys

A pay-as-you-go pricing model that’s flexible and can be canceled at any time

Cons of using Userflow:

Lacking in integrations (less than 10 in total as of March 2024)

Limited scalability for larger enterprise clients

Choose Apty if you run multiple applications (e.g. Salesforce, Workday), and you need a comprehensive enterprise software adoption tool for employees

If you work in a smaller team and you’re looking for a simpler solution, Apty might not be your best choice; nor if your goal is end-user product adoption

Apty is an all-in-one enterprise transformation platform that gives you the tools for digital adoption.

Apty's features

Guided workflows: Provide step-by-step on-screen guidance for your users (employees in this case).

Application analysis: Track user behavior and identify common issues with your application and processes.

Cross-application support: Guide users through multi-app tasks that involve internal applications and other software.

Data validation: Solve data accuracy and quality issues by prompting users to fix errors while they’re inputting data.

Enterprise-level businesses

Apty pricing: 

Apty offers a free evaluation period and a custom plan. Contact the team for a custom plan and quote.

Pros of using Apty:

Great for large companies with complex software ecosystems, with tools for guiding their employees and analyzing software use

Helps spot and fix user problems, improving software adoption

Cons of using Apty:

Not a great fit for small teams looking for simple tools nor if you want to guide your non-employee end-users

Custom pricing requires contact with sales team

10. UserGuiding

Choose UserGuiding if you’re on a budget. It’s one of the most low-cost user onboarding solutions currently available in the market

If you need something more sophisticated, like event-based triggering and broad and deep integrations with other tools, UserGuiding may not cut it for you

UserGuiding is a no-code digital adoption platform for creating a linear user onboarding process.

UserGuiding's features

Resource center: Use this widget to make all your resources accessible in one place

NPS surveys: Measure your net promoter score (NPS) with this in-app survey tool

Onboarding checklist: Deploy this in-app widget to guide users through the onboarding experience with a checklist

User segmentation: Create user segments for targeted onboarding

Analytics: Centralize user behavior data in an analytics dashboard

Small to medium teams

UserGuiding pricing: 

UserGuiding offers a 14-day free trial for users. Then you have a choice of three plans.

Basic: From $69/month

Professional: From $299/month

Corporate: From $499/month

Pros of using UserGuiding:

Affordable for teams on a budget, and offers essential onboarding tools without a high cost

Helpful features like NPS surveys and onboarding checklists simplify user guidance

Cons of using UserGuiding:

Lacks advanced features such as event-based triggers and extensive integrations with other platforms

Won’t meet the needs of those looking for a deeply customizable onboarding experience

11. Whatfix

Choose Whatfix if you're a large company looking for digital adoption platforms that offer a wide variety of integrations

If you want something that’s much more customizable and gives a targeted experience, like user-based triggers, then look elsewhere

Whatfix is a no-code tool that allows you to create interactive product tours, as well as employee training.

Whatfix's features

Interactive walkthroughs: A no-code editor to create a step-by-step product walkthrough.

Knowledge bases: Self-serve resource centers for giving easy access to help resources.

Task lists: An onboarding checklist to guide the user through the process.

Analytics: A dashboard to view product analytics and user data.

Whatfix pricing: 

You’ll need to talk to the sales team to get a quote. You can also request a demo.

Pros of using Whatfix:

Wide range of integrations and interactive product tours, making it ideal for large companies

Offers resources to improve user onboarding, including knowledge bases and task lists

Cons of using Whatfix:

Lacks advanced customization and segmented user experience features

Lack of a clear pricing structure, requiring contact with the sales team

12. Intro.js

Choose Intro.js if you have coding skills or have dev resources available

Intro.js is a good choice for tech-savvy teams that want a super-budget option that can be deployed quickly and only need very basic onboarding

Intro.js is a JavaScript library for creating product tours. This is a DIY solution that costs only $9.99 for a lifetime commercial license, though coding skills are required.

Intro.js' features

Tours: Create basic step-by-step product tours.

Tooltips: Use tooltips to give guidance on specific features.

Individuals and small teams

Intro.js pricing: 

Intro.js is open source, which means you can try it out for free. For commercial licenses, they have the following plans, depending on how many projects you want to create.

Starter: $9.99/lifetime

Business: $49.99/lifetime

Premium: $299.99/lifetime

Pros of using Intro.js:

Cost-effective DIY solution that’s great for developers or teams with coding skills

The library is open source, with a low-cost lifetime license for commercial use

Cons of using Intro.js:

Requires coding knowledge to implement, making it inaccessible to non-technical users

Provides only basic onboarding features, without access to more complex product tours

13. Intercom Product Tours

Choose Intercom Product Tours if you already use Intercom and you want to try out a product tour software

If you need something more robust and outside of linear onboarding, then you're better off looking elsewhere

Intercom Product Tours is a product tour add-on to Intercom's core offering. It's easy to use, but the depth of its features are still lacking.

Intercom Product Tours' features

Core features are:

Product walkthroughs: Provide standard step-by-step interactive product tours.

Tooltips: Supply in-product guidance that targets certain features.

User segmentation: Target and segment your audience.

Integration with other Intercom features: Intercom's product tours software integrates with Intercom's other tools such as its chatbot.

Users of Intercom

Intercom Product Tours pricing:

It’s available as an add-on to an existing Intercom plan. Contact sales for a quote. 

Pros of using Intercom Product Tours:

Perfect for existing Intercom users, seamlessly integrating with their product ecosystem and provides simple software tours

Offers basic features like walkthroughs, tooltips, and user segmentation for targeted guidance and onboarding

Cons of using Intercom Product Tours:

Limited depth of features for onboarding needs beyond basic, linear product tours

Requires an existing Intercom subscription, which adds costs for those who aren’t already using their services

14. Userlane

Choose Userlane if your need is more towards employee onboarding and training

If you're looking for customizable tools that are more oriented toward the end user, there are better options to suit your needs

Userlane is a product tour software that can be used for either internal onboarding or user onboarding but it leans more toward training employees.

Userlane's features

Guided onboarding: Effectively onboard users to your product with personalized, step-by-step guides.

Audience targeting: Tailor communication to user segments (to a limited degree).

Process recording: Record your process and create a guide based on that.

Userlane assistant: When enabled, your users can use this to easily navigate guides, messages, search, and help.

Medium and enterprise-level businesses

Userlane pricing: 

Contact Userlane for a custom quote.

Pros of using Userlane:

Ideal for businesses focused on employee onboarding and training

Offers audience targeting to help customize the onboarding experience

Cons of using Userlane:

Not a great fit for those seeking highly customizable tools, specifically for onboarding of end-users

Lack of clear pricing structure, requiring prospects to contact their sales team

Choose Stonly if you want a basic and less costly no-code design builder to get started on user education

As a budget tool, Stonly isn't ideal for for massive end-user adoption and struggles with contextual guidance and targeting

Stonly helps you create an interactive guide for your product, as well as provide self-serve support.

Stonly's features

Interactive guides: Create an interactive tour for employee or user onboarding.

Self-serve support: Build self-serve guides to reduce support tickets.

Knowledge bases: Create a knowledge base to accelerate employee education.

Small and medium companies

Stonly pricing: 

Stonly offers a 14-day free trial for users. Then you have a choice of three plans:

Starter: From $99/month

Business: From $199/month

Pros of using Stonly:

Affordable, easy-to-use no-code solution for interactive user guides and self-service support

Leverages knowledge bases to educate end-users and reduce the number of support tickets

Cons of using Stonly:

Lacks detailed user guidance and targeting, so it isn’t ideal for wide user adoption

It likely won’t meet the needs of larger enterprises

Why build interactive product walkthroughs in the first place?

An interactive product tour enables you to guide users through a specific set of actions within your product. By detailing specific steps to take, it guides users from A to B.

It’s an essential part of ensuring a great user experience and guaranteeing your users understand — and love — your product. Let’s take a look at the specifics.

Product tours help guide first-time users

Imagine booking your dream vacation, but not being told which airport you fly from. You’d be pretty frustrated, right?

That’s why you need a product tour — in this case, an onboarding tour . These teach new users about the potential of your product without them needing to figure it out for themselves.

By guiding users through your top features, you enable user activation and improve customer retention. In fact, 86% of people say they’d be more likely to remain loyal to a business that invests in welcoming and educational onboarding content.

And if they can’t use your solution, they’ll look elsewhere. So product walkthrough software is a must. 

Product tours help increase feature adoption

Product tours aren’t just for new users, they’re also a great way to engage existing users around specific features they could find useful.

You can create a product tour to increase feature adoption across your product portfolio. It’s a great way of sharing features your users haven’t yet found to ensure they’re using your product in full. It’s even better if it’s user-triggered.

Product tours enable you to personalize user experience

Hyper-targeted tours let you cater to individual users and user segments to create a better in-product experience.

Let’s say you introduce a new feature developed specifically for the marketers using your software. With the customer data you’ve gathered thus far, you can create an in-product tour for this feature and only show it to marketing teams and managers.

This is an example of a customized product tour that’s hyper-relevant, considers the individual job to be done , and makes sure all users know how best to use your product.

What makes a successful product tour?

The 15 product tour software solutions shared above provide the tools you need to create product tours that encourage adoption, reduce churn rates, and improve user onboarding . 

Great product tours aren't just about tools, though — they’re what you make of them.

So, what's the key to success? 

Here are a few tips to help you make incredible product tours:

Be clear and concise: Users don't need lines and lines of guidance — they just need a nudge in the right direction. Use to-the-point language to guide your users through your tour flow. We found that short, relevant copy of 25 words per step works best.

Present core value: Aid your users in reaching their “aha!” moment with personalized tours. This helps ensure users don't abandon your product before understanding its full potential.

Keep it short and sweet: Our latest benchmark report found that product tour length greatly impacts the completion rate. Tours with four steps receive the highest completion rate of 60.1%%, while tours that include five steps or more drop to under a 20% completion rate.

Use visuals throughout: User onboarding doesn't need a wall of text — a picture is worth a thousand words, after all. Engage your new users with images throughout, and don't be afraid to explain steps using video. 

Following these tips will help ensure you're creating product tours that provide actual value, instead of a quick rundown of what your product offers. Product tours are a time to impress users and fight churn — not a time to bore them.

Wrapping up on interactive walkthrough software solutions

You've reached the end of our tour on product tour tools. Thanks for tuning in.

Building great products involves more than just creating them. You need to get users onboard. You could have the most impressive product on the market, but if users can't get to grips with it, you're likely to encounter issues with customer retention and churn.

Guiding the user journey and providing support during any learning curve is key to the success of your product. These sixteen product tour tools offer ample choice; consider the features to look out for and what's most important for your needs.

If you're curious to find out more about Chameleon's easy-to-use suite of digital adoption tools, get in touch and schedule your demo today , or get started for free and start exploring at your own pace.

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How To Create A Product Tour for Customers in 2024

Think of your amazing product as an elaborate feast – without a guided tour, your customers may not fully understand the complex flavors it brings to the table.

That's where a product tour comes in, serving as a virtual tour guide that introduces new users to your app and helps them get comfortable with your UI.

It's the key to long-term engagement, product activation, product adoption, and user retention.

So, if you want to keep your customers coming back for more, let's dig into what a product tour is, how to create one, and why it's essential for your business in 2024.

What is a Product Tour?

A product tour is a guided walkthrough of your product given to new users when they sign up. It is the quickest way to successfully onboard customers and ensure they get value out of your product at the earliest. 

Through a product tour, you can showcase:

• How your product works
• Its benefits
• Hidden features
• How to use it

In other words, effective product tours are like a concise and clear roadmap that helps users quickly understand your product's flow and value by taking them on a step-by-step journey through its features.

What is a Guided Product Tour or Walkthrough?

Imagine having a personal tour guide that helps you unlock the full potential of a SaaS product with ease.

That's exactly what a product tour or interactive walkthrough offers.

Interactive guides showcase:

Think of effective product tours as a concise and clear roadmap that helps users quickly understand your product's flow and value by taking them on a step-by-step journey through its features.

5 Reasons Why You Need to Invest in a Guided Product Tour

Let's dive into the reasons why interactive walkthroughs are a game-changer for your business:

Adopt a Product-Led Strategy ‍

In today's competitive market, prospects have countless alternatives at their fingertips.

That's why it's time to let your product take the lead, backed by strategic sales efforts.

Here’s where you can leverage product tours to drive your product-led growth marketing strategy – allowing prospects to experience the value of your product and provide personalized guidance!

The best course of action is to let prospects explore and adopt your product independently, reducing their Time to Value through product demos. The longer it takes for them to see the value, the more likely they are to look elsewhere.

Improve Product Adoption and Upsell

How do you ensure user adoption ? Say goodbye to boring emails and elevate user experience with interactive product demos instead! You can use guided product demos to take your users through new features, introduce them to unexplored areas of your product for feature adoption, and optimize the onboarding process. Do this and see user satisfaction levels go through the roof! 

You can also upsell premium additional features with compelling tours that showcase their value. Onboarding process tours can drive cross-selling opportunities and entice users to upgrade for more benefits.

Ensure Customer Success

A guided product tour is the key to optimizing your customers’ user journey, ensuring they get the most out of your product.

Say goodbye to the hassle of googling "how to" guides and fumbling through software alone.

With a step-by-step product tour, they'll effortlessly learn how to maximize their product experience and save time.

Big win for customer success teams!

Good onboarding experiences also help to guide users to their "aha" moment with ease. Show them how your product can transform their work or life and build lasting relationships with customer loyalty.

Adding an interactive product tour on your website can captivate prospects and prolong their stay on your site, which can significantly boost your SEO.

This is because a longer dwell time can indicate to Google that your company is an authority on the topic and potentially result in a higher page ranking.

Improve Employee Onboarding Experience

Having a guided product tour as part of your employee onboarding experience is a great way to familiarise your new hires with your product. This saves the bandwidth of the customer success team, engineering team, and even the product team!

Get. Set. Go launch that Onboarding Tour 🚀

How to Create a Guided Product Tour on Storylane?

The fastest and easiest way to create an amazing product tour is with no-code interactive product tour software like Storylane . Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Capture Your Product’s Screens

To ensure that your demo is effective and beneficial, it's important to highlight the features of your product. To do this, start by using Storylane's Chrome Extension to capture screenshots of your software's screens.

For an interactive product tour that gives customers a sort of Sandbox experience, you’ll have to choose the Chrome Extension's ‘Record HTML’ option – this also gives you advanced capture options to make sure you’re covering all bases!

Step 2: Open the Storylane Editor and Add Guided Steps

Once you finish capturing the screens, you’ll be directed to the Storylane Editor.

Here, you can choose from a variety of widgets like tooltips and modals to create a flow for your product tour. These will form the steps of your product tour.

Step 3: Customize Your Steps

Each widget that’s added as a step can be customized to match your requirements. You can use product tour tools to make stylistic changes like the background color, the beacon color, add a backdrop, change size and alignment, etc. You can also make more advanced changes like:

• Adding close ‘x’ buttons
• Previous/next buttons
• Numbering steps
• Adding lead forms
• Enabling auto play of demos and more!

Step 4: Add Advanced Flows and Personalization

To make your tour more interactive and show more complex product features, you can create advanced flows like creating a product tour to keep users engaged and avoid drop-offs.

• Personalize for your tour structure: You can edit screens to change the content inside – such as editing text, adding graphs, embedding images, blurring sensitive data, deleting elements and more.

• Personalize at scale for your client’s needs: You can use advanced features to personalize text, day/time, image and video tokens to suit your customer’s specific needs

Step 5: Publish and Analyze

While you are building your demo story, you will notice that the status is "Draft". Once it’s ready, you can publish it by clicking on the ‘publish and share’ button in the editor. This will publish your demo story and provide you with different options for sharing – you can share it publicly or opt for secure sharing through passcodes/expiry dates.

Once you share your interactive guided product tour in the desired channel, it’s time to wait for a while and dig into the analytics ! With a product tour software like Storylane, the analytics feature often is the most valuable one too as it can help you uncover real time helpful insights. 

You can check overall impressions and engagement, story analytics, and even session analytics! These advanced analytics will equip you with valuable insights to optimize your product tours in the long run.

Here's an interactive demo that showcases the entire flow:

Also check out: Best Product tour software for SaaS

10 Best Tips to Create Effective Product Tours That Convert

To create a compelling guided product tour, you need to weave together essential elements. Here are 10 actionable tips to guide you in creating an effective product tour:

• Use a Storytelling Approach

The key to a successful product tour is storytelling. By narrating a compelling story that showcases how your software can be used, you can keep users engaged and help them understand the benefits of each feature.

Have fun and create a product walkthrough that delights your users – if they enjoy the app experience, they're likely to stick around and gain value from the product. It's not just a "nice-to-have"; it’s essential for user retention and satisfaction.

• Lead with Value

When creating a product tour, it's crucial to provide contextual guidance by showing users upfront how your product can enhance their lives. Make sure the value proposition is clear from the very beginning of their journey.

Ask yourself at every step: Does this help users understand the value of my product or feature?

Avoid overwhelming them with explanations of every little feature, as this can frustrate and annoy them.

You can always introduce additional features later on.

Instead, focus on highlighting the necessary features that will help them experience your product's core value and lead them to their "aha" moment.

• Make the Navigation Simple

Don't leave your potential customers in the dark with confusing navigation options. If your product tour is complicated, prospects may leave without exploring further.

Your product demos should be user-friendly, allowing them to move seamlessly between sections and understand your product with ease.

Show users exactly how to use your product, where to click, and what each action affects.

• Keep the Messaging Crisp

To avoid overwhelming or annoying users with an extensive product tour, focus only on the features that are relevant and important to them. 

Start with the most critical features first, so that users can understand how they work without getting confused by other things. Keep it simple and straightforward for a smooth and engaging product tour experience!

• Make Sure Your Tour is Structured

If prospects ask themselves, "Why is this feature showing up when I click something else?" during your product tour, it's a sign that your tour may be disorganized and confusing.

To prevent users from getting distracted or lost, create a clear structure for your complex product tour that allows for smooth and intuitive navigation.

This is especially important if you're a product manager showcasing multiple tools or features within the same walkthrough.

Make sure your users know where they're going and how they're getting there, so they can fully understand and engage with your product.

• Personalize for Better Engagement

Personalization is a powerful tool to create a sense of belonging and connection with your users.

By personalizing your product tour, you can focus on what's important, as the personalization has already been taken care of. Show your potential customers that you value their individuality and provide a personalized experience to drive engagement.

And with product tour tools like Storylane , you can effortlessly personalize text, images, and even video!

• Engage Users with Media like GIFs, Photos, and Videos

Don't let your product tour be boring and forgettable.

Spice it up with engaging media to capture your users' attention – like an intro video of yourself welcoming users to the tour or a funny GIF to put a smile on their faces.

A more interesting and enjoyable product tour will leave users wanting to click through, resulting in higher engagement and better conversion rates.

• Keep Users on Track with Calls-To-Action

A clear and prominent CTA can guide users and keep them engaged throughout extensive product tours, driving them toward taking a key action.

Depending on your product tour's purpose, the CTA can encourage users to try a new feature, add a new integration, or do anything else that’s your desired action.

Keep the CTAs prominent to guide users along the desired path, take meaningful actions, and drive customer engagement and conversions.

• Tailor Your Tutorial: Feature Relevant Parts for Different Users

Not all active users have the same needs or interests when going through your product tour.

Instead of bombarding them with irrelevant information, quickly customize your tutorial by dividing user segments and featuring only the parts that matter to each segment.

With Storylane , this can be easily done to make your product walkthrough more engaging and conversion-friendly.

By providing a tailored product tour experience, you can better meet the specific needs and interests of your new customers or prospects, resulting in higher engagement and better results.

• Keep Making Data-Driven Improvements with Feedback

A successful product tour should improve customer success.

After the tour, you should monitor user behavior from advanced analytics and collect user feedback to:

• Identify pain points
• Areas of confusion
• Locate drop-off points in your product tour

With this information, you can make necessary adjustments, refine your messaging, and optimize the user experience.

4 Examples of Great SaaS Product Tours

Let’s look at some SaaS product tour examples that have nailed it in getting customers to love their products!

Grammarly is one of the product tour examples that leverages interactive elements such as hotspots and beacons to transform its onboarding process into an engaging experience that promotes meaningful learning and action.

Hotspots and beacons are strategically placed to draw users' attention to important features and guide them through the learning process.

This approach is particularly effective as Grammarly's actual product functionality operates in a similar manner, using hotspot-like elements to highlight grammar errors.

Plus, Grammarly considers returning active users or those already familiar with the tool by providing the option to skip the tour, avoiding repetitive onboarding for those who don't need it.

Slack’s product tour highlights the collaborative features of the platform – showcasing how active users can communicate and collaborate with their team members. This helps users grasp the value of the product and how it can enhance their work processes.

Another unique aspect is its interactive and personalized approach, led by a chatbot named Slackbot. Through a conversational style, Slackbot engages users by asking about their interests and preferences and then customizes the tour accordingly. This creates a more engaging and interactive experience compared to a traditional one-way presentation, paving the way for better product adoption.

Upon registering for an account and logging in, new users are guided to create their initial project by Asana. The creation of a new project is a pivotal action that highlights the value of Asana's features to new users.

And for those who complete Asana's engaging product tour, they can look forward to receiving personalized app guidance tailored to their unique needs, leading them to their "aha" moment of discovery and success!

Asana's user-friendly approach includes contextually relevant tooltips that provide helpful guidance during the onboarding process, ensuring that new users are supported every step of the way.

Evernote is a versatile note-taking tool designed for both business and personal use. This product tour example shows how Evernote's product tour is designed to help users get started by showing them how to create their first note. It then provides a series of feature walkthroughs that cover more advanced use cases related to organization and note editing. Additionally, the product tour includes an onboarding checklist that allows users to complete individual tasks, fostering a sense of accomplishment and progress as they explore the tool's capabilities.

Q1. What is a product walkthrough?

A product walkthrough is a guided demonstration or tutorial that showcases the features, functionalities, and benefits of a product to a user or customer. It typically involves step-by-step instructions and visuals to help the user understand how to use the product effectively. Product walkthroughs are commonly used in software applications, websites, and other digital products but can also be used for physical products or services. The goal of a product walkthrough is to familiarize users with the product, highlight its key features, and provide a positive onboarding experience to promote product adoption and customer satisfaction.

Q2. What is an interactive product tour?

An interactive product tour is a dynamic and immersive way to showcase the features, functionalities, and benefits of a product to users or customers. It usually involves a guided, interactive experience that allows users to actively engage with the product and explore its various aspects.

An interactive product tour may include elements such as interactive elements like tooltips, modals, pop-ups, step-by-step guidance, visuals and multimedia, and customization.

Q3. How to do a product walkthrough?

To make a product walkthrough, first identify the key features and functionalities of your product that you want to showcase. Then, you can use a product tour software like Storylane to create a step-by-step guide or interactive experience that highlights those features, provides clear instructions or prompts, incorporates visuals or multimedia, and allows users to actively engage with the product to explore and understand its value proposition effectively.

Q4. Why use a product tour?

Product tours are beneficial because they provide an engaging and informative onboarding experience for users, helping them quickly understand the value and functionality of a product. They can improve product adoption, customer retention, and satisfaction by guiding users through key features, functionalities, and benefits, and helping them become proficient users, thus maximizing the potential of the product.

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The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

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Product Tours: A Definitive Guide to Enhance User Engagement

Product tours are a helpful tool used by product managers when guiding their users to find value in their products. By guiding how users interact with your product, you highlight how your product can add value to their everyday life.

Effective product tours are a combination of science and art. It equally requires data analysis and design to match the needs of your users perfectly.

So, the big question is: How can product tours enhance user engagement ? This article will give you a definitive guide to using product tours to increase engagement.

But first, what is a product tour?

Table of Contents

What is a product tour?

What is not a product tour, #1. new users may need more information, #2. it saves time and money, #3. it builds trust, components of good product tours, #1. focus on your key features, #2. promote a dependable brand experience, #3. provide value, #4. trigger product tours with user action, #5. embrace self-discovery, #6. personalize, #7. timing and context are key, #2. typeform, #1. userpilot, #3. appcues, #4. userguiding, how to create interactive compliance training for bank employees, how fintech apps are using gamification to increase user engagement, top gamification companies for employee & customer engagement, gamification in gambling and online casinos.

Product tours serve as a guide that provides a complete walkthrough of your product’s features. Its main goal is to encourage new users to become active and drive product adoption . This will lead to product-led growth and, ultimately, product success.

Source: appcues

Interactive product tours are created with in-app messages that make user onboarding easier. It’s composed of tutorials that help users navigate the app. It helps companies simplify the onboarding process as well as boost user engagement.

To understand product tours better, let’s discuss what they are not.

Some product managers must distinguish product tours from product demos, employee onboarding, or client onboarding.

A product tour is a customer engagement tool that interacts with end-user to boost product adoption rates. It’s a set of experiences within the product itself. Therefore anything else that does not focus on the product experience is not a product tour.

Product demos are used to show off your product’s new features and are used to drive sales. Hence, they focus on selling rather than guiding users as they explore your product.

Why do you need a product tour?

Only some products out there have a product tour, so you may need to be more familiar with why your product requires it. Here are three reasons why your product needs a product tour:

Imagine signing up for a new product you’re very interested in. After signing up, you can explore and navigate the product independently.

Isn’t it confusing not to be given any guidance as to how you can maximise and fit the product into your routine?

Doesn’t it make you want to exit the app or the website and not give it another go?

Some product managers must remember that, although they are very familiar with the product they developed, their new users must be.

A good product tour highlights the value of your product, making it easier to understand.

A product tour will save you and your users time. 

You can also save money with a successful product tour. New users will likely engage with your product immediately because of the tour. This will pique their interest and prevents customer churn.

Guiding your users straight to what they expect from your product shows reliability. It shows that you are willing to walk them through and save them the trouble of figuring out everything independently. This builds trust and helps you gain loyal customers seeking your business.

You can use your product tour to build trust with your customers. That’s why you need to know what makes a product tour exceptional.

Product tours are simply what the word implies – a quick tour highlighting your product’s key features and functionalities.

However, these engaging tours are critical to boosting user engagement, so keep that in mind when designing your product tours. They should fit perfectly into all the stages of the product adoption cycle.

Product tours start after new users sign up and log into your product. At that point, ensure that your tour includes the following components:

• Initial product overview or tutorial – The first thing your users need to see upon logging in is an initial product walkthrough. The product overview may be the tour itself. However, the tour can still include some important elements for better results.
• Interactive guidance –   You can add chatbots to accompany your users as they go through your product tours. You can use it to provide easy-access information and minimise the need for technical support. This helps users navigate your product flawlessly and become productive in no time.
• Live messaging options – Adding a live messaging option is helpful if your users need to talk to customer service. With this feature, you give them the convenience of choosing what kind of help they want.

Provide your users with all the information they need to reach their “Aha!” moment. You must introduce your product’s core features as soon as they log in.

Guidelines for creating the perfect product tours

Now that you know what product tours are, let’s discuss creating a successful product tour to increase user engagement.

Every product tour has its purpose. It may be to onboard new users, walk current users through a product update, or highlight a new feature.

Creating the perfect product tour must be your top priority regardless of your main goal. Here’s a definitive guide to making the ideal product tours:

A good product tour should be clear and definitive. It must define the product and its features, but only some things at a time.

Focus on the most essential elements of your product. Provide meaning to your product and what users can accomplish with it.

Source: fastercapital

Let’s say you are to create a product tour for a social media app. Here are the key features you can highlight:

• Point to where the search tab is
• Where the friend list is
• Where their subscriptions are listed, and
• How to subscribe and follow content creators

Answer your users’ questions while displaying how simple the functions are and how they can easily navigate the app.

Maintaining a consistent brand experience across your channels is very important. Remember that to have an excellent user experience, your brand must have a consistent design, tone of voice and approach. This includes your onboarding, training, support, and product tours.

When your brand experience is inconsistent, your users will likely feel confused because specific standards are unmet.

To maintain brand consistency, design a user journey map. This will help you lay out the stages of the user journey and align the experience around your customers’ perspectives.

Product tours should never be disrupting or draining from your customers’ point of view. Instead, they should feel thankful and at ease during the tour. So introduce your product’s value as soon as you can.

If your customers don’t find tours valuable, they’ll likely exit and won’t be open to anything similar. That’s why it’s essential to create relevant and efficient product tours.

Product tours don’t have to start after users sign up for your product. It’s much better to trigger these tours with a specific user action to give it more context.

A quick overview is helpful, but initiating the tour in one go will overwhelm your users.

Give your users ample time to get used to your software and provide guidance whenever they hit a milestone. What’s the use of rushing them to keep them in your mobile apps anyway?

One of your main goals is to show your users the gem that is your product. However, always telling them which way to go differs from how to achieve this. You can’t limit what your users will do with your product.

According to research , users who are free complete the tour at their own pace are more likely to complete it. You can add a pause button to allow users to return to the product tour whenever they want.

Creating generic product tours for all users is just as good as not creating a product tour. If you want to appeal to all users by making one basic product tour, you will likely appeal to none.

You can personalise product tours through segmentation and gamification.

Segment product tours according to user roles

To personalise your product tours, segment users based on their characteristics and purpose for using the product. You can also segment users based on their language preference, product version, user persona , and geographical location.

Source: clevertap

You can implement user segmentation by:

• Tracking user behaviour – Use a product analytics tool to add information about product usage and user behaviour. Understand how the different groups use your product and create product tours that are interesting for them.
• Comparing activity – After putting your users into groups, you can compare the different types of your users. This will help you understand how to create a tailor-made product tour just for them. You can also increase engagement for users with low activity and prevent them from churning.
• Measuring impact – By measuring the impact of your product tour on different user segments, you can make relevant changes to increase user engagement.

Applying gamification strategies

Another way of personalising product tours is through gamification .

Gamification is the application of game-like elements, such as challenges and rewards, to encourage participation and engagement.

Here’s how to gamify your product tours for a more personal touch:

• Avatars – Allow users to design their avatars in a way that resonates with them. This adds to your product’s fun value and excites them of what’s to come.
• Checklists – Providing a list of all the stages of your product tour helps keep users focused and attentive. Knowing what’s in store gives your users a grasp of the tour and how it will help them.
• Rewards – Some users may need more motivation to finish your product tour. That’s why you can use a rewards system to spice it up. Rewarding users with coupons at your store is the best and most effective way to motivate them.
• Badges – To ensure that users will return and finish your product tour, reward them with badges for every stage they accomplish. This allows them to recognise their progress and encourages them to go through and finish the tour.

The last tip for a perfect product tour is to showcase your product’s value exactly when your users need it. If you create a product tour about a new feature, launch it when the feature is already on the page.

If your product tour is misplaced where it’s relevant, it might cause a negative experience for the users. However, when your tour pops up exactly when it’s needed, it enforces the value of your product. Find the perfect combination of timing and context for your product tours, and you’re golden.

Best product tour examples of 2023

Demio is a webinar hosting company with one of the best product tours because of how interactive it is.

The highlight of their tour is a fake webinar for their users. The webinar will start with a Demio employee explaining what the webinar is all about. They will then give you the hosting spotlight and allow you to share your webcam and presentation.

Source: demio

To make things more exciting, some fake guests will attend to give you the feel of using the product.

Demio perfectly captures the meaning of a successful product tour that highlights the value of its product. All of this while giving their users the time of their lives!

Typeform is an all-in-one online forms platform that their clients use for registrations, incident reports, lead generation, and many more. Because of its vast platform, Typeform’s product tours vary for different users.

What makes Typeform’s product tour unique is its laid-back and friendly tone. They let the users get comfortable before the tour.

Typeform replaced the start button with a  “Show me the highlights” button, as seen below. This conveys that the tour will be quick and concise, only showing the essential features of their product.

Source: typeform

If their client doesn’t want to start from scratch, Typeform offers masterclass templates relevant to their needs. They use these templates as product tours to educate, engage, and drive their customers to make successful forms.

Introducing their users to various unique templates is an excellent way to establish their value.

Slack is one of the most successful messaging apps many corporations use today. 

For their product tour, Slack uses helpful tooltips and personable copies. Their tooltips explain how public channels and direct messages work and how to differentiate each one.

Source: slack

Slack also perfects brand consistency with its app and website’s design and laid-back tone. The product tour encourages you to chat with the bot to learn the key features and mechanics of the product.

Best product tour software to create engaging product tours

Userpilot is a product tour software that provides personalised in-app experiences that help their clients increase engagement. 

Aside from their friendly interface, they also offer many ways to segment users. Here are some ways Userpilot segments your customer base:

• Custom event
• Feature tags

Your product tours should be a memorable experience for your users. That’s what Mambo is all about. This gamification platform helps businesses enhance user engagement and experience with game-like strategies.

Mambo adds competition and rewards to your product tour, making it fun and engaging. With custom app gamification, you can provide a personalised experience your users can access anytime from any device.

An interactive product tour that excites your users about your product is what you need to increase user engagement.

Since its launch in 2013, Appcues made a massive wave of transformation to the SaaS product tour landscape. 

With its easy product tour builder, you can create elegant visualisations for product walkthroughs and slideshows. You can construct tooltips and slideouts across your product tour to make your users’ journey smooth.

Whether you want to enhance your existing product tour or start from scratch, Appcues will guide you through every step.

If you want to create great product tours but need more coding knowledge, userguiding is the product tour tool for you.

Its code-free software lets you choose the popups you want for your product tour. You can also select the type of welcome modal you need by adding the details and images.

Userguiding allows you to design great product tours easily and on a budget!

Finding ways to enhance user engagement is undoubtedly one of your top priorities as a product manager. A successful product tour will increase engagement, improve onboarding, increase adoption, and help generate more sales.

Following this definitive guide, you can earn more significant returns from your product tours today and in the long run.

To create a fun and interactive product tour, book a demo with Mambo today!

Download your free “Gamification Guide”

Get your PDF now and start transforming your approach to digital engagement!

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The 16 Best Product Tour Software to Support SaaS Onboarding | 2024 update

Summary points:.

This article is a list of the best product tour software designed to help you guide users through your digital product. You will find some popular tools like Intercom and Whatfix, as well as lesser-known ones like Chameleon. Read on to discover what they can do for your business.

How Important Are Product Tour Apps?

Any SaaS business runs the risk of losing potential customers because they can’t figure out how to use the product from the get-go. This is where product tour software comes into play. They introduce users to your product and help them navigate its features to discover its value.

Effective product tours can increase product activation, adoption, and user retention rates and loyalty . Product tour software can also be used to record and analyze customer feedback. If you’re on the hunt for a good product tour tool, check out our suggestions:

1. Userpilot

Cost : from $249/month

Best Features:

• Growth Insights
• Engagement Layer
• User Sentiment
• Reporting, Targeting & Customization
• Integrations

With Userpilot you can create fully interactive product walkthroughs and tours. It offers many segmentation and personalization options, as well as advanced analytics. It is easy to use and install (by downloading a Chrome extension and adding a JavaScript snippet). Userpilot is Custify’s primary choice in product tour software and we often recommend it our customers. We also have an active partnership so, as a customer of Custify, you can benefit from a significative discount.

2. UserGuiding

Cost: from $69/month, billed yearly

• Onboarding Checklist
• Segmentation
• Resource Centers
• NPS surveys
• Goal Tracking

UserGuiding is a product tour and digital adoption platform that you can use to create fully customizable in-product experiences easily without any coding. You can also set up sophisticated onboarding flows, checklists for additional help, and resource centers to maximize efficiency and engagement. UserGuiding’s NPS surveys feature helps you gather customer input to measure customer satisfaction and improve customer experience. Keep in mind that, at the moment, UserGuiding elements show on mobile devices but can’t be used for mobile apps.

3. Intercom

Cost : from $59/month

• Code-free builder
• Audience targeting
• Multipage tours
• Click-to-advance

Intercom is a conversational relationship platform that has a product tour add-on. You can use it to create product tours for your customers and drive onboarding and adoption. With Intercom you can also create frameless video tours to make your customer feel closer to you. However, Intercom tours are linear, with no real interactivity.

Cost : free version, price quote for other plans

• Mobile guides
• Guide consumption analytics
• Themes and styling
• Pre-built layout library
• Guide scheduling

Pendo helps you interact with customers by designing personalized onboarding and tutorials, and by sending in-app messages. You can tailor your messages for specific customer segments to make sure they all know how to use the features they need. In-app messages can also result in reduced customer support calls due to increased customer satisfaction. However, keep in mind Pendo’s interface is not friendly to inexperienced users.

Cost: custom price quote

• Automatic, Precise Targeting
• Condition-Based walkthroughs
• Zero-Coding Content Creation
• Multilingual

Whatfix offers interactive product tours and smart content creation. Like Userpilot, it can be installed via Chrome extension and JavaScript snippet. You can use it to easily create content, no coding skills required, and display it in various formats (video, PDF, etc). Whatfix’s installation process is a bit difficult and its customization options are limited.

Cost: from $249/month billed yearly or $299/month billed monthly

• Onboarding tours
• In-app surveys
• In-app messaging

Appcues is an easy-to-use product tour software that comes with a no-code design-builder and many design options. Its tracking features require no coding skills as well, so you don’t need any help from developers or analysts. Appcues also comes with custom dashboards for reporting and analysis. Nonetheless, its price range is very high compared to that of other software from this list.

7. CommandBar

Cost: free version, from $249/month for other plans

• Universal search
• Product tours
• Onboarding checklists
• Help hub/resource center

Cost: price quote

• Full Interface Control
• Advanced API Support
• Multi-language

WalkMe is one of the most popular product tour software on this list. You can use it to quickly build, test, and launch non-linear product walkthroughs. It has a wide variety of features like analytics, A/B testing, and task automation, which may seem overwhelming at first. Based on reviews, it’s price quotes are quite steep, and it’s more suitable for large businesses.

9. Chameleon

Cost: from $279/month

• Microsurveys (including NPS)
• Event Triggering
• Audience Segments
• A/B Testing

Chameleon is an onboarding and product tour software that you can use to record and analyze customer feedback. Although not as well-known as other tools such as Appcues or WalkMe, Chameleon provides many UX elements to use in product tours. It also offers custom CSS, allowing you to set specific styling or themes for your product walkthroughs. However, custom coding means Chameleon will take longer to deploy.

10. Userlane

• Audience Targeting
• Multi-Language
• Reporting/Analytics
• Surveys & Feedback
• Customer Segmentation

Userlane is a no-code product tour tool that allows you to offer tailored guidance and support to users. With Userlane you can collaborate with your team members to build step-by-step, on-screen interactive guides. It is easy to use and customize and it gets regular releases of new features. Based on online reviews, one of the downsides is that Userlanes’s analytics feature could use improvement.

11. Userflow

Cost: from $200/month, billed yearly

• Launchers/Hotspots
• Surveys/NPS
• Flow/checklist views
• Automatic, segmented flow triggering

With Userflow you can build in-app, highly customized, and dynamic flows with no code. Its drag and drop builder is visual and intuitive and it allows you to easily preview flows, directly in your own app. It is also a customer input software that you can use to collect user feedback via NPS, CSAT, and free-form text surveys. However, access to many of its features is restricted on the lower pricing plans.

• Intelligent Analytics
• Complex Flow Creation
• Multiple Domains
• Custom Validations

With Apty you can simplify the learning curve for users and help them get familiarized with your product. You can use walkthroughs and in-app messaging to onboard users or highlight newly launched features. Apty’s analytics tool analyzes user behavior and helps you create customized flows for various user groups. One possible drawback is that Apty’s deployment and integration can take some time.

13. Nickelled

Cost: from $99/month

• Unlimited users and views
• Easy page embedding
• User Segmentation
• Embed video or audio in guides

Nickelled is a 100% code-free product tour software. You can use it to drive product adoption with guided tours, website banners, and onsite widgets. Nickelled is cross-platform so it works on mobile, desktop, and tablet. It doesn’t require software downloads or browser extensions, and Javascript is optional. It is one of the less pricey options on this list, but note that it offers no customer segmentation at the moment.

14. Usetiful

Cost: free version, from €29.90/month for other plans

• Product tour
• Customizable themes for native look
• Usage analytics

Usetiful markets itself as an “affordable premium solution for digital adoption” which seems to be accurate. You can use it by pasting a snippet of code into your product, or by adding their browser extension. Their product tours and smart tips were designed to look native in your software product for good user experience. As is often the case, lower pricing plans don’t include access to many features.

Cost: Free for Basic Plan, $29 per user/month for Pro Plan, and customizable charge for Enterprise packages.

Best Features

• Automatic guide creation for training employees and assisting customers
• Instant documentation of best practices across teams
• Document consistency and easy update
• Automatically updated documents
• Screenshot redaction
• Embedded guides in any CMS

Scribe is the first process documentation tool of its kind. It’s a browser extension or desktop app that automatically creates how-to guides.

Simply click “Record” and capture your process. Scribe will instantly create a step-by-step document, complete with written instructions and screenshots. Additional features enable you to edit and update your Scribe, effectively making those changes wherever it’s shared or embedded.

16. Intro.js

Cost : free open-source, lifetime commercial license starts at $9.99

• Simple, lightweight API
• Completely customizable
• Free open-source
• Easy install
• 24/7 Priority support option

Intro.js is a very smart tool that can be just what you need if you’re starting out in the SaaS world. While it doesn’t have all the flashy features of its competitors, Intro.js makes up for it through a highly customizable, 10kB API. The API is free and open-source for personal use. Commercial lifetime licenses start at $9.99 and can go up to $299 for 24/7 priority support, and unlimited projects. The biggest downside of Intro.js is that you need some knowledge of CSS and JavaScript to integrate it. However, that can also be a plus since it allows you to tailor everything to your needs.

Final Thoughts

It might seem difficult to decide – maybe one tool has a feature you like, but is missing another. Or maybe they’re all good. We recommend the following process:

• Find out what you need from the product tour software (be as precise as possible)
• Settle on a budget
• Shortlist a few of the best options for you on this list
• Do extensive research for each of them
• Message them with any concerns or questions

Consider your needs and budget and do extensive research before deciding on one. Based on the high review count on websites like G2 or Capterra, Intercom, Pendo, and Whatfix seem to be the go-to product tour tools. Judging by what they offer, however, Appcues and WalkMe are very good choices as well. So here you have it, the next part is on you – good luck!

Written by Victor Antiu

Victor Antiu is the Marketing Manager at Custify. With nearly 10 years experience, his focus is SEO, product marketing, and B2B inbound strategy. When he’s not trying to fix websites and automate processes, he’s traveling and sailing around the world.

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The 19 Best Product Tour Software for Marketing, Sales, & Product

In order to effectively sell software to someone, they have to first understand what it does. 

Screenshots and descriptions work to a point, but they often leave something to be desired. Free trials are great if your product is simple, but if it's too feature-rich or complex for prospects to understand it easily, they might never make it to that "aha" moment. 

Getting a prospect into a trial or on a monthly contract is only the beginning of the battle. Even if someone purchases your product, if they’re not able to accomplish what they want with it, chances are you’ll struggle with retention. 

One great solution in the market to overcome these challenges is product tour software. 

What is product tour software?

Product tour software is a type of no-code application that makes it easy to build walkthroughs that help leads and customers better understand your product. 

Product tour software can be used by marketers to give site visitors access to interactive product tours, by sales teams to demo their products and create POCs, and by product managers to create onboarding tours that improve the onboarding experience for new users.

The 19 best product tour software platforms

Each of the different use cases of product tour software — marketing, sales, and product management — has its own set of tools within the space that caters to the way they need to use the software. So below, we've split the tools into lists for marketers, sales, and product to help you better understand which specific tools are right for your team's needs.

Best for sales teams

Product tour software for sales teams is often referred to as demo automation software . It's used by sales teams either as a custom demo environment for running live demos or as a way to create product POCs quickly and easily.

Here are the five best product tour tools for SaaS sales teams.

TestBox sits on top of a real, live instance of your product, so it not only includes 100% of your product's features and functionality, but it also always reflects the most up-to-date version of your product. That means that when your product changes, there's no work for your team to do to get new features to show up in your TestBox sandboxes.

Each TestBox sandbox is preconfigured with sample data and functional integrations, so leads don't have to enter PII or connect critical company systems to fully experience your product — it feels as though they've already been using it for months.

Additionally, a quick links menu lists your top features, enabling leads to quickly navigate to the features they care about testing the most, and guided walkthroughs explain what each feature does and how to use it. This saves your team time and eliminates the need for sales reps to hand-hold leads as they navigate your product.

AEs can run live demos using TestBox sandboxes. Unique sandboxes can be generated instantly and infused with data that's specific to a prospect's industry. Additionally, AEs can enable and hide specific features in the quick links menu to keep sales demos focused on what leads care about most.

After a live demo, AEs can send unique POCs to leads as leave-behinds instead of static sales enablement slides and PDFs. Then, using TestBox's advanced analytics, they can see which stakeholders accessed the playground, what features they tested, and how long they spent testing overall and on individual features to follow up with hyper-personalized communications.

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo to see how TestBox can help you create on-demand, personalized demo environments and POCs for every lead.

2. Demostack  

Demostack has two different plan options: One lets you do an overlay of your existing demo environment to show different leads custom data during live demos. The other lets you create a clone of your product to send to leads as a POC. 

Demostack offers a number of interesting features like the ability to create demo templates, which can save your sales team time when building demos. They also offer a presenter mode so sales folks can include notes in their demos, ensuring they hit all the most important talking points throughout their pitch. 

Related Reading: The Best Demostack Competitors and Alternatives

3. Consensus

Consensus is kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure video demo tool. Essentially what you do is create demo videos of different features of your product and upload them to the Consensus platform, and then their software lets prospects select which features they want to learn about, effectively letting them create their own demo path. 

You get access to performance analytics which show where people drop off in a demo or which CTAs are converting best to help presales folks further optimize demos. They also have a few integrations that allow you to easily share links with prospects.   

4. Reprise Replicate

Reprise Replicate lets you create a clone of your software to give prospects an in-depth look at your product’s functionality. You’re able to customize the data in the clone per prospect to make it as relevant as possible. There’s also the option to create templates for different verticals, which gives reps a great starting point and saves a lot of time. 

Another standout feature is the ability to clone your product quickly at any time. That way you can always have the most up-to-date version ready for leads. You also get access to analytics that show what’s working with your demos and the areas you can improve.

Related Reading: The Best Reprise Competitors and Alternatives

Saleo helps teams deliver more streamlined and personalized guided product demonstrations with its browser extension that lets sales reps overwrite the data displayed in an existing demo environment.

Teams can create one or more overlays inside of Saleo to show more personalized information while demoing. None of these overlays change the data in the actual demo environment; instead, they're just masks over the underlying data created by Saleo's browser extension.

If AEs make changes to the data while demoing, those changes are abandoned after the browser extension is turned off, ensuring that all sales reps have clean demo environments to work out of every time they start a new demo call.  

Related Reading: The Best Saleo Competitors and Alternatives

Best for marketing teams

Product tour software for marketing teams, often referred to as interactive demo software , are screengrab-based tools that allow marketers to embed step-by-step walkthroughs of the products on their websites to turn more site visitors into trials or sales leads. These code-free tools let marketers build tours with a Chrome extension or another browser add-on.

Here are the five best product tour tools for marketing teams at SaaS companies.

6. Storylane

With Storylane you’re able to quickly create product tours with no coding knowledge. Their tool records you going through a process, then automatically stitches the different steps together to create the walkthrough. You can also build multiple flows within a product tour to give viewers the option to go through the tours for features that are most relevant to them. 

You can further personalize the experience using Storylane’s integrations which allow you to send specific demos based on a person’s job and market segment. You can also include custom forms from a number of marketing automation tools like HubSpot to capture prospect information during their intro to your product.

7. Navattic

Navattic is another no-code tool that allows you to create product tours. It also uses screengrab technology, but it doesn’t automatically stitch together the steps. This can give you some more control over the flow, but it also means a little longer initial setup time in most cases. You grab screens of key features and then stitch the screens together using tooltips and modals.

They also offer a good amount of design tools to help your product walkthrough match the look and feel of your website. 

Further, you can view performance analytics to understand what product tours are most compelling or where people drop off, and you can even connect it to other marketing tools like Salesforce to better understand how your product tours affect prospects at different points in your sales funnel.

Related Reading: The Best Navattic Competitors and Alternatives  

Arcade offers marketing teams the ability to make incredibly dynamic interactive guides that show off your user experience. Instead of having static pages, you can do things like pan across a page and zoom in on a certain point to make the demo feel more interactive. You can also create hotspots on a page to draw attention to a certain feature and show viewers where to click. 

Another standout feature is the ability to break product tours into chapters. This way you can segment out the tour and even include CTAs at different points to encourage conversions. Last, Arcade has a synthetic voice feature that allows you to create voice-overs on demand in multiple languages.    

9. Reprise Replay

If you want to make sure your product tours are pixel-perfect, Reprise Replay is a good one to consider. They offer a robust design toolset that lets you make your interactive walkthroughs look just as good as any of your other digital properties. You’re also able to do things like create pulsing elements in the walkthrough to draw viewers’ attention to a specific spot. 

Another great feature is the ability to use clips — which are elements you can add to mimic the functionality of your product — to make your interactive tour more dynamic. You also get access to advanced performance metrics to better understand the impact of your walkthroughs.  

If you create a high volume of product walkthroughs for a number of prospects, you’ll want to check out Walnut. With it, you’re able to create walkthrough templates that team members can then personalize further for specific folks. You’re also able to do things like set expiration dates or add access codes for walkthroughs to ensure only the right people have access. 

Another standout feature of Walnut is its AI integration that can help you write text quickly and efficiently for guided tours. You’re also able to collaborate with teammates in real-time to help make the best walkthrough possible. 

Finally, you’re able to collect viewers' comments directly in your demos to get their feedback and respond right away to any questions or concerns they may have.

Related Reading: The Best Walnut.io Alternatives and Competitors  

Best for product teams

Product tour software for product managers is often referred to as digital adoption platforms or user onboarding software. It's used to help new customers get onboarded with a product quickly by showing them around the product, helping them find the features they need, teaching them how to use those features, improving product adoption and user retention, and decreasing churn.

Here are the nine best digital adoption tools for SaaS product managers.

Pendo is a tool that lets teams create effective product tours and engaging in-app guides. It’s great for the new customer onboarding process and can help with feature adoption and activation, decreasing the amount of time your customer success team needs to spend getting new customers up to speed. 

Recently they added an AI product that lets you automate making guides. The AI also gives insights into what’s working well with your current user journey and offers suggestions to optimize the product experience further. With Pendo you also get access to analytics to better understand how customers are using your product and areas where they might be struggling.

12. Whatfix

Whatfix offers two distinct products. Their first product is a digital onboarding widget that lets you add in-app messages to help guide customers. It’s similar in functionality to others on the list but does include some interesting features like auto-translation for content you create in their app. 

You can also export content and flows you build in their app to use in knowledge base FAQs or learning management systems.

Their other product is an analysis tool. It tracks customers’ actions when they’re using your site or product to gather insights about the customer journey and help you better understand how they are using and navigating your product. You can view high-level analytics or segment cohorts to dive deeper into results, helping you get laser-focused with your efforts.  

13. Userpilot

Userpilot is one of the better-known names in the digital onboarding space. With their product, you can create a variety of in-app messages to help with customer onboarding. You’re also able to create messages to help with account expansion and automate them for certain points to help the message land and increase user adoption for key features. 

One unique feature is the ability to A/B test messages to see what works best. You can also localize content so viewers see messages in their local language. You’re also able to customize the design of the in-app messages through custom CSS, which helps keep all your experiences on brand.

14. Intercom

Intercom, primarily a customer support tool, is a little different than some of the others on the list. Instead of using in-app messages that function like pop-up reminders, it lets you interact through pop-up CTA windows. You can send messages based on actions, and it gives customers the opportunity to ask questions if they’re stuck. 

You can also create microsurveys and NPS surveys, showing them to customers through Intercom’s in-app widget to gather customer satisfaction data.

If you want to get really in-depth with your onboarding, Intercom’s Series product lets you do that. You can create custom onboarding flows with conditional logic to contact customers through a variety of channels and at a variety of points. It’s incredibly useful to help you keep things moving forward, reduce the learning curve, and curate specific experiences.  

15. Appcues

If you’re looking for something that’s quick to set up and easy to use, Appcues might be worth checking out. They have a visual builder that makes creating in-app messages quick and easy. You also get access to a number of different design tools to create a cohesive experience. 

Some other features of note are the ability to create segments with conditional logic to have custom flows that align with user behavior. You can also collect customer feedback through surveys to measure customer satisfaction and continually iterate and improve your onboarding flows.  

16. UserGuiding

If you’re a smaller team with a tighter budget, UserGuiding could be a great product for you. They have one of the most cost-effective plans available — good for startups — and you get a lot of functionality for the price. You can create onboarding checklists, add dynamic in-app messaging to guide customers, create a resource center, and even have custom user segments. 

You also get access to engagement analytics as well as the ability to identify and track specific users. On their higher-cost plans, you also get access to additional product tour features like content localization and material scheduling, which allows you to show content within a specific time frame you set.  

17. Userflow

Userflow is similar to Intercom in the sense that it primarily uses chat-like window pop-ups to interact with customers. You can create workflows to engage customers and encourage them to complete different tasks. These come in a few different forms like messages and checklists. 

They also have an AI bot tool you can train on your documentation and website data to respond to customer requests. It’s offered on all their plans and could be a great way to further engage customers. They also have no-code event tracking, which empowers non-technical teams to create events and limits reliance on developers. 

18. Chameleon

Chameleon is a highly customizable option for teams who want to get more granular with segmentation. You can create custom audiences and trigger certain events based on the group someone falls in. They also offer dynamic personalization, which means you can have different content or styles based on the account or user viewing the page. 

Chameleon also offers the ability to A/B different flows to see which performs best and a variety of on-page triggers like hovering, clicking, keyboard inputs, and more. They also have a scheduling feature that allows you to pre-set when experiences start and end, which can be useful for sales or other promotional efforts.  

Walkme is unique among the options on this list because it offers solutions for both employee onboarding and customer experiences. Both have similar functionality, like pre-built templates for different application processes, to help your team get started quickly. Both also offer user recording analysis so you can see what steps users are taking and what roadblocks they face. 

Both let you create on-screen tips and suggestions to build tutorials that educate and encourage users. They also offer a tool called Action Bot, which can provide answers to questions and even set up automation for the user with one click. If you need a tool for both internal and external adoption, Walkme is one to look at. 

Another newer feature in Walkme is the ability to identify who your active users are in the products your company pays for. This can help teams save a lot of money by knowing which users in user-based pricing subscriptions are inactive and should be removed. 

Choosing the right product tour software for your team

Product tour software is an important tool to show customers what your tool is capable of and to further support them once they sign up. The truth of the matter is no one will buy your product if they don’t know what it does, and even if they do buy, they won’t stick around long if they can’t figure out how to do what they want with it. 

Having a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish with your product tour software and who will use it most is a good place to start when looking for options. Create a list of non-negotiables to help weed out options, and focus on the solutions that are best suited to your — and your potential customers’ — needs.

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How to Create the Best Interactive Product Tour in 2024

Table of Contents

Understanding your audience 

Setting clear objectives , research and competitive analysis, analytics and iterative improvements , storyboarding, interactive elements and features, content creation guidelines, user testing and feedback , optimizing for mobile devices, promotion and distribution, choosing the right platform, using interactive product tours to build a winning b2b sales strategy.

These days, it feels like every company and their mother are pulling out all the glitz and glamor to present their products to prospects. 

Don’t get us wrong. How you present your product is important. But it’s about how you do it. 

2024 is the year to delve into interactive product tours to ramp up the power of your sales and customer engagement strategies. By offering unparalleled insights into products with just a click, you can take a more memorable and impactful approach to your lead nurturing strategy . 

Because let’s face it, as a collective, our attention spans are increasingly fleeting. Interactive product tours stand out by providing detailed sales demonstrations that uniquely speak to each user in a manner that not only informs them on the value of your product, but will also engage them. 

With the right approach, an interactive product tour can transform the user experience, leading to higher engagement, improved understanding, and ultimately, delighted customers.

So, join us as we break down everything you need to know about creating the best interactive product tour. 

Create interactive product tours today with Walnut >  

Creating the best interactive product tours requires having a deep understanding of your target audience and their respective journeys. 

If you haven’t already defined your user personas, now is the time to do so. This will allow you to tailor the live sales demo experience to meet their specific preferences and needs by considering factors such as demographics, behaviors, and goals.

Personalization is key here, as it’s the ultimate way to show your prospects you care for them and their needs. 

In addition, by segmenting your product tours based on user roles or behaviors, you create a more relevant and engaging experience that’ll increase the likelihood of them saying “yes.” 

However, while working on your product tour, remember that your audience has varying degrees of comfort with technology. So, be sure to stick to the essential features of your product that present the most value to prospects, while also leaning on building confidence and trust. 

If you start creating an interactive product tour without clear objectives, that’s pretty much like winging a series of paid ad campaigns without any form of strategy set in place. 

It’s crucial to start off with a firm grasp of your goals—whether it’s elevating feature adoption, boosting user engagement, or streamlining the onboarding process. 

Setting such objectives will shape the structure of your product tour, and also ensure that every element introduced is purposeful and impactful for your audience.

It’s also important to delve deep into competitive analysis to understand how your peers introduce themselves to users. This step is crucial in identifying your unique selling points and differentiating your product tour in a crowded market. 

Pay close attention to how competitors highlight key features, sequence their information, and guide users through the buying journey. Adopting best practices while infusing your product tour with innovative elements that reflect your product’s unique value proposition can set you apart.

Visualizing the end goal for your users is paramount. Your product tour should not only acquaint users with the product’s features, but also inspire confidence in its utility. 

By mapping out a user journey that is logical, intuitive, and aligned with your defined objectives, you create a coherent narrative that incrementally builds the user’s understanding and skills. Every step of the tour should be a stepping stone towards enabling users to fully harness the power of your product, ensuring a seamless transition from curious buyer to proficient user.

Diving into the creation of an interactive product tour demands thorough market research and competitive analysis. 

But what we’re referring to here is the analysis of competing product tours. The purpose isn’t to copy what everyone else is doing. 

Rather, it is to understand your competition’s approach while also uncovering opportunities to innovate and stand out from the rest of the pack. This will allow you to grasp the prevailing trends, identify what resonates with users, and pinpoint areas that you know you can easily improve on.

This form of competitive analysis is instrumental in highlighting your product’s unique selling points, as it provides a clear landscape of how competitors communicate their value proposition and engage with their audience. 

Embracing best practices in market research and competitive analysis ensures your product tour is not just another drop in the digital ocean, but a beacon that guides users effectively towards realizing the unique value your product delivers. Through this lens, every aspect of your product tour becomes a strategic move to elevate your product’s visibility and appeal in a crowded marketplace.

When it comes to perfecting an interactive product tour, the journey is continuous, and it is underscored by the powerful role of analytics and performance tracking. 

Your initial demo won’t be perfect, but it will serve as a starting point, and its real value will lie in leveraging data for ongoing refinement. 

Analytics are a lifesaver because they offer insights into how users interact with your product tour, while also pinpointing areas of engagement, and identifying stages where improvements may be needed.

Your team will need to be open for continuous improvement by closely monitoring performance metrics. This will allow you to adjust and optimize each element of the tour to better meet user needs and expectations. 

This process is not about seeking perfection on the first attempt, but rather about being responsive and adaptable, using real-time feedback to incrementally enhance the user experience. 

To build an effective product tour, you’re also going to need to rely on storyboarding.

Storyboarding refers to visually organizing your interactive product tour, to ensure your message is conveyed with clarity and impact. 

At the heart of effective storyboarding is the flow design. This helps in setting the stage for a compelling narrative that guides users through your product’s features and benefits. This process begins with defining the flow of your product tour, a task that requires a thoughtful balance between your objectives and the needs of your users.

The flow needs to lead users on a journey that progressively builds their understanding and engagement with your product, with each step of the tour meticulously designed to contribute to a cohesive story. 

Visual elements play a crucial role in enhancing the overall experience. Imagine taking users by the hand, leading them through your product’s landscape where every feature and benefit is a scenic stop. This journey is thoughtfully plotted to deepen their understanding and investment in what you’re showing them. And here, visuals aren’t just decor; they’re powerful tools that grab attention and make a lasting impression.

When tailoring each step of the tour, it’s about viewing it through the user’s eyes—acknowledging the diversity in their backgrounds and challenges, and customizing the content accordingly. Adding interactivity turns the tour from a monologue into a dialogue, boosting engagement.

But the storyboard isn’t set in stone. It evolves through user feedback, a critical step where your product tour undergoes continuous refinement. This feedback loop is your product tour’s lifeline, ensuring it stays relevant and resonates deeply with your audience. 

Through this process of ongoing enhancement, informed by user insights and analytics, your product tour doesn’t just keep pace with expectations—it sets new standards.

Integrating interactive features and elements into your product tour transforms it from a passive presentation to an engaging journey. 

These kinds of engagement tools are much like hosting a lively party where every element sparks interest and makes guests feel right at home. Variety is key, with each UI pattern bringing its unique flair to the event for user interaction.

Interactive tours serve as personal guides, leading users step-by-step through your product, simplifying complex processes into manageable chunks. Hotspots, the subtle nudges within your app, draw attention to specific points of interest, encouraging discovery and exploration.

Tooltips provide bite-sized pieces of information without demanding action, enhancing understanding with minimal intrusion. 

Together, it all helps create an immersive experience that not only educates but also engages, ensuring your software makes a lasting impression.

Content creation for interactive product tours requires a blend of engagement and education, aiming to capture the attention of today’s software buyers who prefer experiencing products directly over hearing sales pitches. 

The core of a standout product tour lies in delivering content that is not only rich in information and visually captivating, but also clearly demonstrates your product’s benefits and value.

The ultimate aim is to connect your product with its potential users in a way that not only educates and engages, but also streamlines the path to conversion and onboarding. 

By embracing these guidelines for content creation—prioritizing a design that speaks to users, ensuring interactivity, and maintaining clarity in your messaging—you lay the groundwork for a product tour that resonates deeply with viewers

And this will enrich their experience with your product from the first click.

Conducting user testing is a critical step in validating the effectiveness of your interactive product tour. 

It offers a direct line to understanding how real users interact with your product tour, what they find engaging, and where they may encounter confusion or barriers. This process is not a one-off event, but rather an ongoing cycle of feedback loops and iteration, essential for refining and optimizing the tour experience.

Interactive tours provide opportunities for collecting user feedback, not limited to direct inquiries like surveys. Advanced analytics from interactive demo platforms can reveal detailed engagement metrics, highlighting which aspects of your product tour captivate users’ attention the most. This data simplifies the task of identifying strengths and pinpointing areas needing improvement for lead nurturing .

Embracing a continuous improvement mindset is vital. While gathering, analyzing, and acting upon user feedback can seem daunting, leveraging solutions with robust analytics capabilities can streamline this process. These insights allow for targeted enhancements, ensuring that every iteration of your product tour resonates more effectively with your audience.

It is worth noting that navigating through varied user opinions to make meaningful improvements can be challenging. It’s sometimes necessary to create customized versions of your product tour to cater to distinct user segments, ensuring relevance and effectiveness across diverse audiences.

Additionally, users can inadvertently help detect bugs or technical issues. Addressing these promptly enhances the tour’s reliability, ensuring a seamless experience. Utilizing tools that separate the demo environment from your product’s back-end can safeguard against exposing users to any technical glitches, maintaining the integrity of the user experience. 

Through this iterative process of testing, feedback collection, and refinement, you can continually enhance your interactive product tour, making it an ever-more powerful tool in your engagement and conversion arsenal.

These days, optimizing your interactive product tour for mobile devices isn’t just ‘nice-to-have.’ 

If anything it’s a necessity. That being said, you need to ensure your product tour delivers a friction-free experience across various screen sizes and operating systems with responsive design. 

This will also ensure cross-device compatibility. With all the tech that’s available, there’s no excuse for not being able to provide customer delight .

Mobile optimization enhances user engagement and accessibility on any internet-connected smart device, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, or desktop, making it easier for potential customers to explore your product anywhere and at any time.

There are many marketing tactics that can maximize the visibility and impact of your product tour. 

It’s highly recommended to go beyond social media promotions and enforce a multi-channel approach to reach your target audience. Email campaigns, tailored to highlight the value and uniqueness of your product, can spark interest and encourage clicks from those already interested in your offering. 

Forming partnerships with related businesses or platforms can further extend your reach, introducing your product to new but relevant audiences. 

By strategically leveraging these promotion strategies and distribution channels, you can significantly increase the engagement and effectiveness of your product tour, turning viewers into users and advocates.

When it comes to selecting the right platform for interactive product tours, you wouldn’t just want to choose randomly from the first page of your Google results. 

This is a very important decision that can significantly impact your product tours’ effectiveness. 

Beyond having a smooth UX, you want to make sure your platform of choice offers in-depth analytics. This will enable you to gauge how buyers interact with your tour, which is invaluable for ongoing refinement.

At the end of the day, a platform that offers robust analytics, flexibility in creating diverse tours, and supports your promotional strategies will be key to maximizing the impact of your interactive product tours. 

You know, like Walnut (wink, wink).

Creating an effective interactive product tour in 2024 has become a core requirement for engaging and converting tech-savvy users. 

This journey starts with understanding your audience, crafting a compelling narrative through storyboarding, and integrating interactive elements to create an engaging user experience. 

Additionally you wouldn’t want to forget the importance of optimizing for mobile devices, utilizing effective promotion and distribution strategies, and choosing the right platform are crucial steps towards ensuring your product tour reaches its full potential. 

Strategically implementing these guidelines will not only enhance your product’s visibility, but also significantly improve your user engagement and conversion rates.

What are you waiting for? Start creating winning interactive product tours by clicking that “Get Started” button.

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Best Product Tour Software for SaaS in 2024

In the competitive world of Software as a Service (SaaS), ensuring that prospects understand your product’s value is essential. Enter product tours —interactive guides designed to showcase a product’s key features and functionalities. These tours are essential for helping buyers self-evaluate, which is becoming an increasingly important part of the modern buyer journey.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the best product tour software for SaaS in 2024, discussing what makes these tools indispensable and how to choose the right one for your business.

What is a Product Tour?

A product tour is an interactive, guided walkthrough designed to introduce prospective buyers or new users to the key features and functionalities of a software product. These tours help users navigate through key parts of the tool, understand its value, and quickly get up to speed with its capabilities. Product tour software is specifically designed to create these guided experiences, ensuring that buyers and new users can effectively learn how a product can benefit them, with minimal friction.

Product tours can be used on a company’s homepage or product pages, in marketing materials, at events, on live sales calls , or as leave-behinds for committee decision-making closer to the end of the sales cycle.

Why are Product Tours Important?

With complex enterprise software and SaaS tools, first impressions of a product are crucial. Product tour software has become an essential tool for SaaS companies looking to attract qualified buyers, enhance user onboarding, and improve product engagement. By using product tours, SaaS companies can provide a hands-on experience that showcases the tool’s benefits and functionalities, helping prospects and new users understand the product better.

For example, HR platform provider Hireology uses product tours to accelerate its sales cycles.

• At the top of the funnel, Hireology uses the product tours on their website to engage prospects with self-service marketing content, allowing them to self-qualify in or out of a sales process early on – without consuming the Sales team’s cycles.
• Mid-funnel, in addition to presenting live demos, Sales teams share guided product tours as leave-behinds to highlight specific features for different audiences and their unique needs. They extend Hireology’s reach to a broader circle outside of the core buying committee in order to create wider consensus without needing every stakeholder to participate in every live call or demo. And they’re easy to build – Hireology’s eight feature-specific leave-behinds were created within a single month.
• Across the funnel, every demo makes a bigger impact with consistent delivery and tight messaging.

As a result, Hireology has seen opportunities involving product tours close 50% faster than those where product tours were not utilized.

Features of Reliable Product Tour Software

Customizable.

A quality product tour software should be highly customizable, allowing companies to tailor the tour to their specific needs and branding. This means being able to adjust the steps, add custom content, and align the tour’s look and feel with the company’s visual identity. Customizable tours ensure that the prospect’s or customer’s experience is cohesive and relevant to their needs.

Analytics and Insights

Analytical tools are vital in product tour software. These tools provide insights into how users interact with the tour, where they drop off, and which steps are most engaging. By analyzing this data, companies can optimize their tours to improve user experience and increase conversion rates. Analytical insights help in making data-driven decisions to enhance the effectiveness of product tours. These insights can also be used to discover new buying committee decision-makers, and understand which areas of the product are most relevant to them.

Interactive Elements

Interactivity is a key feature that distinguishes an effective product tour. Interactive elements such as tooltips, pop-ups, and clickable buttons engage users and make the learning process more enjoyable. These interactive demo elements can guide users through complex processes step-by-step, ensuring they understand and retain information better.

Ease of Use

The ease of use of product tour software is crucial for both the creators and the end-users. For SaaS companies, the software should have an intuitive interface that makes it simple to create and update tours without needing extensive technical knowledge. For example, many go-to-market teams incorporate product tour creation into their demo program — a solutions engineer might create a library of tours for marketing or product marketing to customize and use externally. For end-users, the tour should be easy to follow and not feel intrusive or overwhelming.

Integration Capabilities

Integration with existing tools and platforms is essential for seamless operation. The best product tour software should easily integrate with other SaaS platforms, CRM systems, and analytics tools. This ensures that the tour can leverage existing data and functionalities, and become a more cohesive part of the buyer’s journey. For example, a marketing automation integration might help your team score leads based on demo activity and trigger automation to generate more MQLs and PQLs. An integration with a CRM can give sales reps visibility into how prospects view and share guided demo leave-behinds.

Scalability

As a company grows,  product tour needs may evolve. Therefore, the software should be scalable, accommodating increasing numbers of users and more complex tour requirements. Scalable product tour software can adapt to the changing needs of a business, ensuring that it remains effective as the company expands and demo capacity needs increase. For example, if you are demonstrating at an event or tradeshow, your product tour may need to support several hundred simultaneous users.

Customer Support

Reliable customer support is a critical feature of any software. Reliable product tour software should offer robust customer support to help resolve any issues quickly and efficiently. This support can come in various forms, including live chat, email support, comprehensive documentation, and community forums.

How to Find the Best Product Tour Software in 2024

Integration with saas platforms.

When choosing product tour software, it is essential to consider how well it integrates with your existing SaaS platforms. Integration capabilities ensure that the tour can pull in data and offer a seamless user experience. Look for software that can easily connect with your CRM, marketing tools, and analytics platforms, such as Salesforce, Marketo, Hubspot, and Google Analytics. A product tour software with a data API can enable you to pull data into a data warehouse or data lake, then push to another platform to create or update records. You can also trigger and automate sales or marketing actions based on prospect or customer actions.

Scalability and Flexibility

The software should be scalable and flexible to meet the growing needs of your business. This includes the ability to handle an increasing number of users and the flexibility to customize tours as your product evolves.

Traditional demo environments can be costly to maintain, in addition to the resources required to update and verticalize data for every demo. Choose a platform that enables you to build demo environments and product tours that faithfully render your products without drawing on cloud computing costs. Doing so will help your team demo simultaneously and at scale, such as at conferences and events, without additional SE resources in place to maintain the environment.

Data-driven Optimization

Data-driven optimization is crucial for improving the effectiveness of product tours. The software should provide detailed analytics and insights, allowing you to understand user behavior and optimize the tours accordingly. Select software that enables you to get dashboards with key metrics, such as total number of views per demo and time spent on each demo.

Other important analytical tools include the ability to drill down into individual user activity, such as which screens they viewed, how long they spent on each screen, and where they dropped off of the demo. For leave-behinds, you should be able to create a custom sharing link to send to your prospects, and get notified when they open it.

Mobile Responsiveness

With the increasing use of mobile devices, it’s vital that your product tour software is mobile responsive. This ensures that users have a consistent and effective experience, regardless of the device they are using.

Cost and Pricing

Cost is always a significant factor when selecting software. Evaluate the pricing models of different product tour software options to find one that fits your budget while offering the features you need. It’s important to consider that many stakeholders throughout your organization may need demo capabilities — including presales, sales, marketing, product teams, and more. Choosing a comprehensive platform that serves multiple stakeholders may reduce unneeded spend, while increasing the utility of your demo program throughout the go-to-market motion.

Frequently Asked Questions About Product Tour Software

What is product tour software? Product tour software is designed to create interactive, guided walkthroughs that help users understand and navigate a software product. These tours provide step-by-step instructions and highlight key features to demonstrate value to prospective buyers, and ensure customers can effectively use the SaaS software they’ve purchased.

What features does product tour software offer? Product tour software typically offers features such as customization options, interactive elements, analytics and insights, ease of use, integration capabilities, scalability, and customer support.

What are the benefits of product tour software? The benefits of product tour software include improved conversion rates, better user onboarding, increased user engagement, reduced learning curves, and higher user satisfaction. By providing a guided experience, it helps prospective buyers and customers quickly understand the value of the product.

How do you make a product tour? Creating a product tour involves using product tour software to design an interactive guide. This includes defining the steps, adding interactive elements, customizing the design, and integrating the tour with your existing platforms. Testing and optimizing the tour based on user feedback and analytics is also crucial.

Are product tours effective? Yes, product tours are highly effective. They provide hands-on experience, which helps users understand the product better and faster. Effective product tours lead to higher sales conversions, as well as improved user engagement, satisfaction, and retention, making them a valuable tool for SaaS companies.

Key Takeaways

• Product tours are interactive, guided walkthroughs that help users understand and use software products effectively.
• They are essential for SaaS companies to accelerate the buyer journey, as well as enhance user onboarding, engagement, and retention.
• Reliable product tour software should be customizable, offer analytics and insight, include interactive elements, and be easy to use.
• Key factors to consider when choosing product tour software include integration, scalability, data-driven optimization, and more.

Choosing the right product tour software is crucial for ensuring a seamless buyer journey and effective user onboarding experience. By considering the features and factors outlined in this guide, SaaS companies can select the best tool to meet their needs and empower users to discover their product’s value.

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Interactive product tours & guides

Help new users learn your software quickly to increase conversion rates, and introduce existing users to new features for improved product adoption.

No-code design. AI-powered.

Everyone can create self-guided product tours, UI guides, and interactive walkthroughs.

Struggling to create engaging product tours for your software? Let our AI handle it for you!

Onboarding tours

Welcome new users to your software and highlight its benefits

Interactive guides

Guide users step by step through all your main features

In-app tutorials

Display tutorials without requiring users to leave your application

Show users how to get things done in your application

Interactive product tours enable you to welcome users, guide them step-by-step, explain features, and highlight important elements in your SaaS or website

Segment users by role (e.g. admin vs. team member) to personalize your onboarding tour

Customize tours to perfectly match your brand's look & feel

Easily change fonts, colors, alignment, padding, and more. Customize size and adjust position so product tours feel like an integral part of your UI.

Our product tour software supports custom CSS for advanced styling

Have product tours available when your users need them most

Our software makes it easy to trigger product tours from tooltips, checklists, or even other tours, ensuring they’re accessible to users at the right stage of their product discovery journey

Place your welcome tour in the in-app help center so users can consume it on their own time

Don’t wait for engineering time. Build tours whenever you need them.

Our no-code tool lets you create interactive product tours, walkthroughs, and guides directly in your app’s UI without needing your IT team

You deserve the best product tour software

Cross-page tours.

Walk users through complex multi-page flows in a single tour

Dynamic URLs

Profile pages, user IDs and other dynamic URLs are supported

Simple localization

Language settings are imported from your app automatically

Text inputs

Ask users for text inputs and advance tours upon receiving it

Delay cards

Wait for animations to finish, handle dynamic content

Custom events

Trigger product tours based on user activity in the ui.

Use custom events to tailor guided tours in your software. For example, launch a tour when the user performs a click or another event.

Optimize user experience. Maximize business results.

Know which tours users like, where they get stuck and when they skip. Optimize flows according to your goals.

Integrate Product Fruits with your analytics and CRM tools to get the most out of it

Segmentation

Engage users with content that's relevant to them.

Customize guided tours based on personas, user journey steps, device, application versions, user type (such as first-time vs. returning) and any other factors.

Use real-time data for segmentation to ensure that your targeting adapts to changes in user behavior

Create guided tours & walkthroughs without a developer

5-minute setup

Deploy our snippet via tag manager or test it with a Chrome extension

Hassle-free deployment

Build & QA on staging, deploy to production with few clicks

We don’t interfere with your source code, nor alter UI or functionality

Style tours to make them look like an integral part of your software

Performance neutral

There’s no impact on your app’s loading or response times

GDPR compliant

We’re ISO certified. Our servers are located in the EU

Device agnostic

Works with any SaaS and web based app, regardless of user’s device

Start onboarding more users today

Get in touch. We'll help you to create engaging guided tours for your SaaS or website.

See what else you get with our all-in-one product adoption platform

Onboarding checklists.

Provide the user with a list of tasks to complete

Hints & tooltips

Highlight features, give tips & contextual information

NPS & surveys

Measure loyalty, satisfaction and capture insights

Life Ring Button

24/7 in-app help center: your support anytime, anywhere

Feedback widget

Make it easy for users to report bugs & send feedback

In-app announcements

Pop-ups, banners & newsfeed to keep your users informed

Knowledge base

Provide users with instant answers directly in your app

Trigger onboarding flows based on user activity

Let AI write the perfect user onboarding copy for you

Terms & Privacy

Guide customers to success with interactive, multi-step tours to help more customers adopt your product.

To help customers discover your product’s value, show them how to use it with Product Tours.

From onboarding signups to showcasing new features, Product Tours help you drive better adoption across the customer lifecycle.

With Product Tours, you can:

Onboard new customers with multi-page tours that require no code to set up.

Automatically show tours to a target audience on a specific page, like paid customers who visit a new feature.

Proactively guide customers by sharing tours in conversations, messages, and bots .

Re-engage inactive customers by sharing tours as links in emails, or engage customers by linking to a tour inside your product.

Create a more personal tour by using video pointers to guide customers.

Here’s how it works

You can build a tour from scratch . Or, get started quickly with a template:

You can create a sequence of posts, pointers and video pointers to guide customers:

With a pointer, you can direct your customers’ attention to a specific website element on your site:

Important: Elements in modals or pop ups cannot be selected.

You can embed images or video in your messages to make them more engaging. Or, add attributes to personalize your message.

Note : We currently support embedding videos in Product Tours from Loom, Youtube, Vimeo, Wistia and Vidyard.

To create a more personal tour, use video pointers to personally guide customers through your product.

Once you set your tour live, customers can easily advance through your tour and really get to know your product.

Your customers can also progress to the next step by typing in, or clicking website elements. This lets them complete more complex actions, or navigate across multiple pages during a tour.

If one of your messages points to a website element that’s off the screen, the tour will also automatically scroll to your next message - easily guiding your customers around.

You can choose to let your customers snooze, or restart your tours, so they can take them when it’s most convenient.

Note: Tours that are snoozed, or restarted then viewed again, will not be recorded as an additional view in tour stats.

Celebrate tour completion 🎉

To finish your tour with a bang, you can send a shower of confetti on the final step:

Learn more about designing a Product Tour (and adding confetti 😉) here .

Automatically show tours to the right customers

You can automatically show your tour to a target audience to help drive adoption of your product. First, choose the page you want your tour to trigger on. Then, choose the audience you want to target:

Learn more about automatically showing your tours here .

If you've localized Intercom to work with different languages, the buttons in Product tours (e.g. 'Next', 'Done') will be localized for your users.

Proactively guide customers by sharing tours

It’s easy to share tours with customers everywhere you engage them - in conversations, messages, bots, emails and more. Just add the URL your tour should start on:

Once added, you’ll be able to share tours across Intercom and anywhere else you interact with customers.

Learn more about sharing tours here .

Can I use Product Tours in my mobile app?

Product Tours are specifically designed to work with web apps. For an engaging multi-step experience on your mobile app, try Mobile Carousels .

Need more help? Get support from our Community Forum Find answers and get help from Intercom Support and Community Experts

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Ayaka furue becomes first-time major winner at the amundi evian championship.

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The LPGA Tour returns this week to Evian-les-Bains, France, and the Evian Resort Golf Club for the 2024 Amundi Evian Championship. The 132-player field represents 28 different countries, including the top four players in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, led by world No. 1 Nelly Korda and 11 of the LPGA Tour’s 12 winners so far in 2024.

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What Is A Product Tour And How Do You Build One Code-Free?

10 min read

If you’re building a product tour for the first time, it’s hard to know where to start.

You want an onboarding process that matches your brand values, respects the needs of multiple user groups, is intuitive to follow, AND that ultimately ends up making you money!

Just the thought of creating something like that from scratch is probably enough to make you dizzy with anxiety.

But fear not! You don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

Let me explain how you can build a product tour without writing a single line of code.

• A product tour shows customers how to use the features of your product that they need in order to activate .
• Make sure your product tour is interactive , not linear .
• Most good product tours contain a welcome screen , a microsurvey for segmentation , a checklist , and multiple experience flows.
• It’s incredibly difficult to build a product tour from scratch unless you’re a coding genius, or have substantial dev resources available.
• It’s much easier (and cheaper) to use a product tour software like Userpilot instead.

Definition of a product tour

Product tours are used in user onboarding as a way to show customers how to derive value from your app.

Ideally, they illustrate to the customer what your product does in an interactive and engaging fashion.

A good product tour will guide users towards the core value of your product, a measurement that is relative to the person using it.

As the value of your product dawns on the customer, they will experience something known as the “ Aha Moment ,” which is when the penny starts to drop about why working with your business might be personally beneficial to them.

Once the customer experiences the value of your product in a first-hand way, they are said to be activated .

SaaS businesses often use product tours to onboard new users.

That being said, tours are just as valuable for highlighting new features during secondary onboarding as they are for the initial part of the user journey.

Feature adoption is correlated with metrics like retention, which have major financial consequences for SaaS businesses.

For more information about the value of retention, please read this post .

I’ve also seen SaaS businesses use product tours as part of employee training, especially when understanding a complicated app is essential to working in towards customer success.

Interactive product tours are essential

We’ve written numerous times on this blog in the past about how onboarding is like customer education. It’s an ongoing process, which never ends.

If you think back to your time in school, there were some teachers who would drone on and on, regardless of how engaged you were in the experience.

But there were also other teachers who turned learning into an interactive, two-way conversation and took your needs into account. I’m willing to bet you liked their classes more!

The product tour equivalent of the boring teacher is the linear product tour . And users hate them…

A linear product tour will generally deliver:

• Exactly the same information
• About exactly the same product features
• In exactly the same way
• To every single user

Put another way, a linear product tour doesn’t take the unique needs of individual customers into account.

The customer is simply processed by means of a top-down system, one that was pre-decided by a remote group of SaaS executives long before you ever came onto the scene as a customer.

If this sounds soulless and tedious, it’s because it is.

All it leads to is confused customers. Look at this example from a newsletter product tour where a user was asked to create a newsletter before uploading their email list. Hmmm…

So what’s the alternative? Interactive product tours.

As the name suggests, interactive tours are a back and forth between the customer and the product they are using.

The customer is only shown the narrow range of product features which are of interest to them, which is probably not many for a new product.

And they are an active part of the interactive product tour, which means that they get to complete small tasks and engage in “learning by doing.”

Since the SaaS world commonly associates the phrase “product tours” with the linear variety of tour, we often refer to great product tours on our website as “interactive walkthroughs,” just to make the distinction a bit clearer.

If you’re wondering how to create interactive product tours for your business, read on!

Main elements of a product tour

While every product tour is different, there are a number of key elements that we see repeatedly cropping up in the best tours we see online.

Here is our recipe for an excellent interactive product tour.

Start with the welcome screen

The welcome screen is a really important component of every great product tour, because it’s the first thing that your customer sees after sign-up.

It’s what’s known as a “ dedicated UI pattern ,” meaning that it takes up the whole of the user interface.

Here are some things that are included on most welcome screens:

• A smiley photo of one of your team
• A friendly message to welcome the new customer personally by name
• An introduction to your business, complete with a quick recap of the value you’re providing
• A quick outline of the next steps in your onboarding process

For example, if you were operating project management software, your welcome screen might say something like:

Welcome David!

We really appreciate you signing up to use PM HQ, your one-stop-shop for making sure all the tasks in your accounting business get done on time, every time.

Allow us to show you what a task board looks like on the next page!

Here’s a simple example of a welcome screen that was built using Userpilot by social media scheduling app Postfity:

Note the smiley face, the friendly tone, and the playful reminder to the user of what Postfity’s main value proposition is: turning the user into a social media ninja!

To improve this welcome screen, Postfity could address the user by name and include a photo of one of their team.

Remember to segment your users

But here’s the thing: if you were to make too much of being warm and fuzzy on your welcome screen, you’re just going to get in the way of what the user ultimately wants to do: which is to use your software.

So the smartest SaaS companies also use the welcome screen as a way to segment users into distinct groups.

Each customer segment has its own “Jobs to be done,” or types of goals that they want to achieve by using your product.

So for the project management example, those might look like this:

• Project manager: organize tasks and make sure they get done on time
• Junior employee: focus on own tasks
• Accountant: view financial data for each task
• CEO: ensure that the bigger picture of the business is proceeding according to plan

Practically speaking, the easiest way to segment your users in-app is by using something called a microsurvey .

This is a short survey with 2-3 questions that pops up right after the welcome screen. Here’s what a microsurvey looks like, courtesy of Kontentino :

I always think it’s a nice detail when SaaS businesses send surveys like this in-app, rather than to the user’s email inbox.

Even though an email might feel a bit more familiar, using the microsurvey keeps the customer in your app and away from the distractions of their inbox.

This means that you can expect a higher rate of engagement.

Create an activation checklist

Once the user has filled out your microsurvey, you should have a pretty good idea of which customer segment they belong to and which Jobs to be Done they want to aim at.

The next part of the product tour is create a checklist which summarizes those Jobs to be Done and get the user to work through them.

Your checklist should be different for every user cohort, and it should only contain the 2-3 specific product features that a particular customer segment needs to understand in order to activate.

If you give any more guidance than that, you’ll end up overwhelming your user, and risk giving them a linear product tour instead of an interactive walkthrough.

Here’s a good example of a checklist, once more from Postfity:

In Postfity’s case, to get their users to experience the core value of their product and activate, they need them to do two things:

• Add a social media account
• Schedule a social media post

Looking at the screenshot again, you can see that Postfity’s checklist asks new users to do both of those things.

This means that Postfity knows that any new users who complete the checklist will end up activating as a matter of course, which is great news from a commercial perspective.

But there are a couple of additional items on the checklist: Signed up , and Account Created . Why is that?

Here, Postfity’s thinking is that it’s motivating to give users credit for easy tasks that they’ve already achieved. That makes it more probable that those users will want to finish the rest of the checklist.

You’ve probably experienced the psychological pull of an unfinished checklist item. It’s quite hard to resist finishing it!

This is called the Zeigarnik effect, and it ensures that unfinished checklist items stay on our minds.

If you’re wondering what tasks to put on your own checklists, it will depend on what your users need in order to activate.

To find that out, look at your product analytics and compare the product features adopted by power users against those favored by users who churned early.

The features that are always favored by power users but never learned by Day 1 churners are likely to be the features that a given segment needs in order to activate.

Build an experience flow for each checklist item

To really make sure that your user internalizes how each feature works, your product tour should include an interactive experience flow for each activation step on the checklist.

That’s a bit jargon-y, so let me explain what I mean.

Going back to our Postfity example, it would be tedious for the user to read instructions like:

• Click on the blue button to the top-left which says “Connect accounts”
• Choose a social media account
• Click “Connect”
• Specify who this account belongs to

I can guarantee that the user would be starting to doze off at this point!

Far more effective is to have the user experience what it’s like to connect their account first hand through an interactive product tour.

In this case, Postfity created a tooltip that automatically highlights the right button to the user to get them started:

And for the next stage of activation, there’s also a handy tooltip showing the user what to do:

Tooltips are just one of a wide variety of UI elements that you can use to give guidance to your users in an interactive product tour.

Other resources include:

• Progress completion bars
• Demo content
• Content templates

For more about UX patterns, I recommend reading this post .

Is it better to create a user onboarding process with or without code?

Now that you know what goes into an interactive product tour , you’ll need to choose whether you build your user onboarding systems manually or look for a tool to help you.

Unless you’re highly tech-savvy and have built websites and mobile apps before, my guess is that it’s going to be tricky to build a product tour from scratch.

Consider that even creating something as simple as a tooltip will normally require 70-100 lines of code.

Then multiply that by all the different UX elements you need in your product tours… and remember that you need a separate product tour for each individual user segment!

It’s a daunting task, to say the least!

Do your developers really want to build (and maintain) multiple interactive walkthroughs AND build your whole site at the same time?

Use code-free product tour software

Fortunately, in 2022 you don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time you want to build a new product tour. The right software will save you a lot of time.

If you can allow even your non-technical product manager to build great product tours, imagine how much time (and money) this will save your development team!

The right product tour software will empower your product marketing team to be able to run cost-effective product experiments at the drop of a hat.

Since no product tour is perfect the first time you build it, being able to A/B test results on the basis of performance data is really helpful.

So which product tour software should you choose?

Give Userpilot a try

Our software, Userpilot , makes it easy to build product tours without using any code.

All you’ll need to do is install our Chrome extension, add a snippet of Javascript, and then you can get started.

It’s easy to build microsurveys in Userpilot. To find out how, read this article .

If you want to customize the microsurvey to your brand’s personality, you can do that as well, without using any code.

If you want to segment your users as part of your onboarding, Userpilot lets you do that too. You can use a combination of the following segments…

• User attributes
• Custom events
• Feature tags

… to create some really unique user cohorts:

If you want to assign experience flows to your segments, Userpilot will firstly let you create a checklist …

… and then build a unique flow for each of the activation tasks on the list.

It’s in the building of experience flows that Userpilot really shines. The sheer diversity of tools you have at your fingertips is huge, ranging from tooltips and modals to hotspots and sliders.

Here’s what building a tooltip looks like in Userpilot:

To help you A/B test your product tours, Userpilot’s software also comes with a dedicated analytics suite.

Userpilot starts at $249 per month for up to 2500 MAUs.

Get a demo today!

After reading this article, your user onboarding should be a breeze!

You now know how to:

• Distinguish a linear product tour from an interactive walkthrough
• Recognize the key features of a product tour
• Build product tours without writing a line of code

Userpilot is an incredibly sophisticated tool that specializes in building interactive product tours.

You can give it a try for free, with no obligations whatsoever.

So what do you have to lose? Click on the banner to get started.

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New Orleans Has Had a Lot of Famous Visitors Lately. Here’s Where They Ate.

How to dine like Megan Thee Stallion, Keith Lee, Mick Jagger, and more

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Share All sharing options for: New Orleans Has Had a Lot of Famous Visitors Lately. Here’s Where They Ate.

New Orleans has long been an accidental playground for celebrities, with tons of actors and musicians making regular visits and a surprising amount who call the city home (at least part-time) — stars like Jennifer Coolidge, John Goodman, and Solange. This past spring, between Jazz Fest, major headliner tour stops, and Bocuse d’Or , New Orleans had a stream of famous visitors, and they made sure to support the city’s restaurants, old and new. Here’s a roundup of where these well-known personalities dined, so you can eat like a celebrity, too.

Megan Thee Stallion at Morrow Steak

Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion made a much-anticipated tour stop in New Orleans on June 10, and while she was in town she visited the city’s splashiest new restaurant: Morrow Steak . The vibey downtown steakhouse, which local restaurateur Larry Morrow just opened earlier this month, posted photos of Megan and GloRilla on the bar to Instagram a few days after their show at the Smoothie King Center with the caption, “Private Dinner.”

Keith Lee at Fantasy Tacos

TikTok food critic sensation Keith Lee visited Baton Rouge in mid-June for his most recent food tour, leaving mixed reviews for the four restaurants he visited (The Bayou Affect, Smoke Bayou, Dr. Feel Good, and Fork N Spoon). But he couldn’t leave Louisiana without a quick stop in New Orleans, which he declared his favorite food city of 2023 after visiting last year. At the end of his week in Baton Rouge, he made the hour-and-a-half journey to Fantasy Tacos , a Mexican fusion restaurant in Gretna on the West Bank of New Orleans. Much like his previous experiences at New Orleans spots like Monday (a Larry Morrow restaurant), and B Sweet Bistro, Lee had high praise for the restaurant.

Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller at Emeril’s and Miss River

On June 12 and 13, the esteemed Bocuse d’Or Americas Selection was held in New Orleans, marking the first time the international competition took place in the U.S. As such, some of the world’s most famous chefs descended on the city, and they made sure to spend their time off dining well. On the last night of the competition, Emeril Lagasse and his son, E.J. Lagasse, hosted Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, and Gavin Kaysen (who make up Ment’or ) at Emeril’s , Lagasse’s flagship New Orleans restaurant. The group also visited Miss River , Alon Shaya’s Four Seasons New Orleans restaurant, enjoying flaming Baked Alaska , and had lunch delivered from Turkey and the Wolf , Mason Hereford’s acclaimed sandwich shop, for Team USA during the competition. It’s very likely that Turkey and the Wolf’s collard green melts and fried bologna sandwiches helped lead them to victory .

Lana Del Rey at Tic-Toc Cafe

Lana Del Rey first got Cajun Country buzzing in mid-May when she posted a photo of her in Des Allemands, Louisiana, less than an hour outside of New Orleans, where she hit up Airboat Tours By Arthur for a swamp tour. Turns out that wasn’t the only stop she made on her way to Hangout Fest in Orange Beach — last week she posted shots from New Orleans, an artsy roundup of film-style photos of the singer on city streets, in front of a Budweiser painting in the French Quarter, and at Tic-Toc Cafe, a Metairie diner. We probably would’ve recommended one of New Orleans’s other excellent greasy spoons , but the aesthetic was on point.

Mick Jagger at Antoine’s and Commander’s Palace

All the way back in late April and early May when Jazz Dads and their ilk descended on New Orleans, one of Jazz Fest’s most long-awaited headliners was dining all over town before and after their gig. Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger ate dinner at New Orleans’s grand dame of fine dining, Commander’s Palace , on Wednesday, May 1 ahead of the Rolling Stones’ show on Thursday, May 2. According to the restaurant, executive chef Meg Bickford served the singer’s group soft shell crab, the restaurant’s famed shrimp and tasso Henican, gumbo, and bread pudding souffle. Then on Friday, May 3, Jagger visited French Quarter stalwart Antoine’s for lunch, where he posed with a Jazz Fest-themed Baked Alaska.

The Killers at Atchafalaya

The Killers were also in town for Jazz Fest 2024, helping kick off the first weekend of the festival with a performance on Friday, April 26 (and a performance at Tipitina’s the night before). Band members Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning, Dell Neal, and Ronnie Vannucci Jr. dined together at Atchafalaya , Tony and Rachael Tocco’s Uptown Creole restaurant known for brunch, shrimp and grits, and gumbo.

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Inside acamaya, ana castro’s hotly anticipated mexican mariscos restaurant in new orleans, the latest new orleans restaurant closings, june 2024.

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Walmart is selling refurbished iPads for $99 today

Who says Walmart deals are only good if they’re for a brand-new product? For those unaware, you can save even more cash on top-dollar tech if you decide to go with a refurbished model. In fact, Walmart is offering a great deal on a refurb bundle as we speak. For $100, you’ll be able to take home a refurbished Apple iPad Air 9.7-inch model with Apple’s A7 chip, Wi-Fi connectivity, and 16GB of storage. Other bundle items include a set of USA Essential wireless earbuds, a protective case, screen shield, and charger.  

Why you should buy the refurbished Apple iPad Air 9.7-inch

Whether you’re a student looking for an inexpensive tablet to take notes on, or a working professional that needs a reliable way to mirror graphs and spreadsheets to a projector, each generation of the iPad Air has prioritized portability and performance. This particular model (the Air A7) uses an older Apple processor, but that doesn’t mean your tablet is going to run slow. In fact, Amazon’s refurb process involves rigorous testing to ensure the iPad runs as close to like-new condition as possible.  

Delivering max clock speeds of 1.3GHz, the iPad Air A7 uses a PowerVR G6430 GPU and 1GB of RAM. As mentioned, internal storage is capped at 16GB, and this is a Wi-Fi only version of the Air A7. In terms of resolution, the Air A7 brings 2048 x 1536 specs to the table, along with up to 10 hours of battery life.  

One of the extra-nice things about promos like this is getting one or two accessories for free. As for the Air A7 bundle, the provided wireless earbuds sound good and are comfortable to wear (but should check out our list of true wireless earbud deals ).  

Considering this is a refurbished offer, we’re not sure how long this package price is going to last. But if you’ve been scouring Apple deals in search of a low-cost iPad, now’s your chance to own one, plus a few other items, for only $100!

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Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world, and if you're looking for some great tech, then you probably already know that Apple makes some of the best wireless earbuds, the best smartwatches, the best laptops, and even the best tablets. That said, it does also garner a very premium price tag, which is a pretty big part of the brand itself, meaning that for a lot of folks in the Apple ecosystem, making any sort of upgrade or expansion to that ecosystem can be very costly. On the bright side, there are a ton of great Apple deals out there in the world, whether it's trade-in value from Apple, or direct discounts from Amazon and Best Buy, you have options.

That's why we've gone out and searched through various big retailers to find you some of the best deals we can find. That includes everything from the MacBook deals, AirPods deals, Apple TV deals and Apple Watch deals to the AirTag, so hopefully, you can find the perfect deal that fits your needs and budget. Apple AirTag (4-Pack) -- $79, was $99

Apple makes some of the best tablets on the market, and if you're creative, then you've likely worked or own an iPad, with some of the best iPads being a staple of creative folks. Of course, being the best does mean that you have to pay a premium price, and while you could grab one of these iPad deals, they'll still be quite expensive. That's where these refurbished iPads come into play since they tend to be significantly cheaper and, most of the time, just have cosmetic issues rather than anything that has to do with the tablet. Not only that, but going for a refurbished iPad is better for the environment since it helps reduce e-waste, and this is one of the reasons we've gone out and collected some of our favorite refurbished iPad deals below.

You can also check out these great Apple deals for some more great options, especially if you want to grab other gear in the Apple ecosystem. Apple iPad (2018) — from $93

Best Buy has one of the best iPad deals around but it only lasts for as long as today does. Right now, you can buy the latest Apple iPad mini for $400 meaning you’re saving $100 off the regular price of $500. A great and highly portable tablet, it’s sure to be a hit with Apple fans and more. Here’s what you need to know about it before you buy but remember that you only have until the end of the day to grab it for this price.

Why you should buy the Apple iPad mini The best iPad around for anyone seeking something small, the Apple iPad mini is a “little powerhouse” as our review explains. It has an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display with True Tone and wide color support so it’s small but looks gorgeous. It’s powered by an A15 Bionic chip so it can handle quite a lot including many games or simply multitasking.

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Reporting by Tom Westbrook and Vidya Ranganathan; Editing by William Mallard

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Thomson Reuters

Tom reports from Singapore on financial markets in Asia, filing daily market reports and deeper pieces on stock, bond and foreign exchange trade. He contributes to the Morning Bid newsletter. He was previously a company and general news correspondent in Sydney and a reporter for News Ltd.

Vidya heads global finance & markets breaking news, overseeing dozens of reporters across the world who cover spot currency, bond, stock & crypto market developments and other fund flows, investor activity, govt policies and corporate actions that impact markets. She also writes and edits markets insights on emerging Asia, with a keen interest in China, and anchors the Cryptoverse column. Vidya has spent 3 decades covering markets, and was previously a trader at Societe Generale. She believes in life-long learning and training, and is now adding Gen AI courses to her masters degree in Physics, MBA and post-grad diploma in applied finance & securities markets.

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Trump survives assassination attempt, slain bystander identified.

Donald Trump survived a weekend assassination attempt days before he is due to accept the formal Republican presidential nomination, in an attack that will further inflame the U.S. political divide and has raised questions about the security failures.

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