Interactions are the primary way you design the experience of your webinar.
They help you collect useful information, guide people toward action, reinforce key ideas, and keep attendees engaged throughout the presentation, which means longer watch times.
The easiest way to decide which interactions to add to your eWebinar is to follow a simple, repeatable process:
Record your webinar with interactivity in mind (or add an Intro to an existing recording)
1. Consider your use case first
Before choosing interactions, start by thinking about the goal of your webinar.
Your use case will shape:
What you want to know about attendees
What you want people to do
What success looks like
The large majority of use cases fall into one of two categories:
Training and onboarding
If your webinar is for training or onboarding, your goal is to help people understand something and put it into practice.
You may care about:
What attendees have already done
Whether they meet prerequisites
Whether they understand key concepts
What their goals or expectations are
Where they are in the process
Whether they are making progress
Whether they need help
You are also guiding people to take action, such as:
Trying a feature
Completing a task
Confidently navigating a system or product
Applying what they’ve learned
In some cases, you may also want to measure success. For example, whether someone completed a step, used a feature, or improved over time.
Sales and marketing
If your webinar is for sales or marketing, your goal is to guide people toward a decision and get them to take a specific action.
This action is your primary CTA—for example:
Booking a call
Starting a trial
Signing up
Making a purchase
Note: In a marketing context, you may have already achieved your primary goal by capturing the lead through registration.
You may care about:
Whether attendees understand the problem
How they are solving it today
What problem they want to solve
What success would look like
How qualified they are
What their level of interest is
What objections or questions they have
How they found you
Everything in the webinar should support helping attendees feel confident taking that next step.
2. Answer two planning questions
Once you know the use case, answer these two questions:
What do I want to know?
Use this question to identify the information you want to collect from attendees.
For training and onboarding, this might include:
What have they done so far?
What is their current level of experience?
Do they understand what you just taught?
Are they ready for the next step?
What are they trying to accomplish?
Where are they getting stuck?
Did the training help?
For sales and marketing, these come in the form of qualifying questions and might include:
What problem are they trying to solve?
How are they solving it today?
What is their role or use case?
How interested are they?
What objections or questions do they have?
Are they ready to take the next step?
What would make this worth buying?
What do I want people to do?
Next, use this question to identify the actions you want attendees to take.
For training and onboarding, this might include:
Complete a task
Try a feature
Follow along in the product
Answer a quiz
Register for the next training
Ask for help
Review a resource
For sales and marketing, this usually centers on your primary CTA.
Ask:
What is the main conversion event?
Do I want them to book a call?
Start a trial?
Sign up?
Purchase?
Register for the next webinar?
Request follow-up?
You may also have secondary actions, but they should support the primary goal.
3. Work your core interactions into your script
The interactions you identify from those two questions are your core interactions. These are the ones you should be most intentional about.
They are also the ones you should work directly into your script, if possible.
The best interactions feel like part of the presentation, not something layered on top of it.
For example:
“Let me ask you a quick question…”
“Here’s a quick check before we move on…”
“Take a minute to try this now.”
“If you want help with this, fill out the form that just appeared.”
“If you’re ready for the next step, click the button here.”
If you want to use an existing recording to create your eWebinar from, and it is not practical to re-record, you can skip this step.
Use interactions during housekeeping
Including “housekeeping” at the beginning of your webinar plays an important role in setting up the interactive experience.
If you’ve put effort into making your webinar interactive but attendees don’t clearly understand how it works—or how they can participate—it can fall flat.
Your housekeeping should explain things like:
How questions will be handled in chat
That attendees will be asked questions throughout
That they should take a moment to respond when interactions appear
For example, if you say:
“If you have questions, ask them in chat.”
You can add a Tip interaction that reinforces the same message, so attendees both hear and see it.
You can also introduce interactivity directly. For example:
“This will be interactive, and I’ll be asking you questions throughout—here’s one to start…”
Then surface:
An icebreaker poll
A quick question
You can either:
Work housekeeping into your webinar script before recording, or
Add a pre-recorded intro at the beginning of an existing recording (either one you record yourself or one of the standard ones we provide)
Learn more about adapting your script (including adding housekeeping) →
Learn how to add an intro to your webinar without having to re-record →
4. Record with interactivity in mind
Ideally, record your webinar with your core interactions already planned and worked into your script.
By referencing them naturally in your presentation, the experience feels more cohesive and present for the attendee.
eWebinars that are planned, scripted, and built with automation and interactivity in mind tend to perform better.
That said, this is not required.
If you already have a recording
You can still make it interactive.
A good approach is to:
Add an intro to frame the experience as an “interactive replay,” so attendees understand how it works and how they can participate
Review your recording and look for natural moments to add interactions, using the same two planning questions:
What do I want to know?
What do I want people to do?
It’s okay if an interaction doesn’t perfectly match what is being said, as long as it adds value or helps you capture information you need.
5. Fill in the gaps
The next step is to create your eWebinar, upload your video, and add your core interactions as planned.
Once that’s done, take a step back and review the full experience. Go to the Interactions tab and look for gaps on your timeline where nothing is happening.
A useful rule of thumb:
👉 Add an interaction every few minutes (around every 3–4 minutes)
You’re not trying to add filler. The goal is to create thoughtful moments for engagement so attendees stay focused and continue participating.
How to evaluate gaps
As you review your webinar:
Look for longer stretches without interaction
Play through those sections
Ask yourself:
Has too much time passed without engagement?
Would a quick interaction help re-engage attention?
Be intentional—interactions should feel purposeful, not random.
Reliable interaction ideas
There are a few simple interactions that work well in most webinars when filling gaps:
Temperature check (poll)
Ask something like:
“Is this helpful so far?” or “How’s this landing?”Vibe check (feedback interaction)
Use a simple rating scale (e.g., 1–5) to gauge how people are feelingMid-webinar check-in (private message)
For example:
“We’re about halfway through—any questions so far?”Pop quiz
Even if it’s low-stakes, this can snap people back into focusTip to reinforce a key idea
A short reminder or takeaway to strengthen what was just covered
These don’t need to be complex—they’re just small moments that keep people engaged and participating.
Many of these examples are available as pre-built interactions in the Interaction Library, which you can use as a starting point.
The roles interactions play
Once you know what you want to know and what you want people to do, it becomes easier to choose the right interaction.
Ask or learn about attendees
Use these interactions to collect input, understand your audience, check comprehension, and capture intent.
This includes learning things like:
What attendees know or understand
What they are working on
What their goals or challenges are
Whether they are interested in taking the next step
Whether they want help or follow-up
These interactions are:
Question
Poll
Quiz
Feedback
Contact form
Private message
Get people to take an action
Use these interactions when you want attendees to take a meaningful next step.
Your primary CTA
Your primary CTA is the most important action you want attendees to take—and the one you will likely want to track for conversion purposes.
This could include:
Purchasing your product
Signing up for a trial
Booking a call
Watching the next webinar in a series
Filling out a contact form
Trying a feature in your product
These are the interactions you can use for that:
Call to action
Special offer
Thinkific offer
Next webinar
Contact form
Learn more about conversion tracking →
Other actions
You can also use a Link interaction to send attendees somewhere to take action—for example:
Visiting a resource
Trying what they just learned in your product
Completing a task in a workshop-style webinar
Use Link when you want to drive action but don’t need to track it as a conversion.
Using the auto-pause to drive action
A powerful way to get people to take action is to pause the video and give them space to do it.
Auto-pause video
Use this interaction to stop the video so attendees take an action—such as trying something in your product, completing a step, responding to an interaction, or reviewing a resource before continuing.
Share something valuable
Use these to reinforce ideas, share resources, add credibility, and offer social proof:
Tip
Link
Image overlay
Hotspot
Testimonial
Conversion alerts
Special cases
Some interactions don’t fit neatly into the categories above, but play a unique role in shaping the experience.
Agenda item
Unlike other interactions, this gives attendees the ability to freely navigate your webinar by jumping between sections in a self-directed way.In-video registration
Used to support registration in ungated sessions.
Learn more →
Keep it simple
You don’t need to use every interaction.
Start with:
What you want to know
What you want people to do
A few additional moments to keep people engaged
Too much can be overwhelming. Be thoughtful, intentional, and keep it simple.
The goal
The goal is to make your webinar feel like an experience.
Not just a video people watch, but something they participate in.
A few well-placed interactions can completely change how your webinar feels and performs.