Google Chrome is killing your demos: How Arc sets you apart in pre-sales

In an industry where demos can make or break a sale, and your tools can make or break your demo, questioning the ubiquity of Google Chrome might seem bold, but hear me out.

Across the last 20 years, I've developed, presented, pitched, demoed, architected and sold using my browser. I've used Firefox, Safari, Opera and eventually gave in and settled on Chrome which has been my daily-driver for desktop for the last 8 years.

Don't get me wrong, these tools have done their job, they've made the web browsable for billions of people. They're "browsers" after-all, why would anyone care that they're not good for demonstrating software?!

Let's take Chrome for example; it has always felt more like a barrier than an helper for demos. It's clunky, slow and takes up way too much of my screen... I'm not demoing Chrome! But, we persist, because "that's what everyone uses" and "there's an extension that fixes that".

I'm not the only one, there are over 34k Chrome extensions that aim to solve productivity issues.

Then, late last year I was invited to the early access beta to Arc: "a new way to use the internet". This wasn't a game changer, this was a straight up revolution!

Why is Chrome so bad for demos?

Ok, I get it, you want to get to the good part on why Arc is better, but let me cook for a little bit.

When you first install Chrome and it's shiny and new, there doesn't seem to be too much of a problem.

As an individual average user, this is great, but as a power user it's all down hill from here. Once you've logged in to g̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶G̶o̶o̶g̶l̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶d̶a̶t̶a̶ sync my bookmarks, theme and extensions, and been browsing for a few minutes. Suddenly your browser starts to look more like this:

As Solution Consultants and Pre-Sales Engineers, it is rare that you're working on just one thing, so either you have loads of tabs open, or more commonly, you have loads of tabs open across multiple windows to support the multiple customers and projects that you're working on at any one time.

How many times have you realised that you've actually got multiple of the same tabs open, because you forgot it was already there, or it was just easier to navigate to it again. I do it too, I leave things open, thinking I'll come back to them, and never do.

But this impacts our customers in ways you might not realise.

Let's say we're doing a remote/hybrid demo, we can't control the way our content is consumed. If we take a best possible case:

• The user has minimal operating system on their screen

• They don't have anything else open....multitasking

• They've got Teams or Zoom fullscreen

You're only able to make use of 46% of their total screen. That's really not much.

Chrome takes up about 15% of your screen with distracting tabs, bookmarks and extensions, so the final demonstrable content (highlighted in orange) is just 39% on their screen!

I could keep going, but this already feels like a big relief. And yes, this is basically just a therapy session for me... hope that's ok.

What is Arc Browser?

Before we jump into why you should switch to Arc for your pre-sales demos, first I'll tell you a little bit about it.

The Browser Company's mission is to reinvent the browser for today. The below is taken from their website and perfectly sums up their frustration with the status quo.

When we think about browsing the internet, we often ignore the browser itself. Instead, we think about all the things we do online. The software that enables it all, the browser, is so ubiquitous that it’s ignored.

Despite the ways our internet use has evolved, the browser has remained relatively unchanged.

What’s more, we blame ourselves for the browser’s shortcomings. When our browser has an overwhelming number of tabs, we call ourselves inefficient; when we get distracted online, we tell ourselves we need more discipline; when we can’t find a url, we think we’re disorganised. Why does the browser get a free pass?

Arc is based on Chromium much like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera are, so you've got access to all the same extensions, developer tools, and functionality you're used to, but with:

• A more secure and private browsing experience

• A nicer and cleaner interface that's fully customisable

• Intuitive, useful and optional AI functionality throughout

• And a company that seems to genuinely be trying to make the future of the internet better

It's just better ok...

They've prioritised a clean minimal aesthetic, and encourage the use of keyboard shortcuts for power users. The best example of this, is the left navigation which can be hidden when demoing, and shown when you're doing research and general browsing.

This menu hides so many little touches, access to pinned tabs and favourites, access to extensions, the ability to quote any part of any page as a sharable URL (great for sharing documentation), and so much more.

They also introduces Spaces, which are kind of like the best bits of tab groups and profiles in Chrome, but without any of the painful awkwardness. Spaces have been such a game changer, I can have my customer demo in a different Space and it's a completely clean look for that customer. I've even used two spaces to show the difference between what my customer sees and what their customer sees, using the colour theming to differentiate.

And for a bit of fun, you can completely theme each space and profile to your hearts content, the built in colour and gradient themes and amazing, but have a plan and see what you come up with.

Pre-sales Excellence

We all know how critical a good pre-sales demonstration is to closing a deal, and there are so many parts to making a good demo, make sure that all that time and energy is not being wasted because your browser is getting in your way.

We're master storytellers, Arc gives us a collection of tools that help us tell those stories in new and unique ways, that will leave a great impression with your customers.

Split View

Using Arc's split view you can have multiple tabs sat next to each other. This is a game changer for customising demos as you can have the customers site up and your demo environment at the same time, without rearranging multiple windows. I've also demoed the frontend and backend at the same time for key functionality, which is so much less jarring then jumping back and forth between windows.

Boosts

Arc also includes Arc Boosts, this is like a quick version of going into your Developer Tools to edit some CSS or run some JS. I used to be a developer in a past life, but this is just so much easier!

You've got a (slightly gimmicky) colour wheel to changes colours, as well as some simple text and style buttons. But the power is in the ZAP button to remove all instances of an object on the page in one go! Also clicking "Code {}" gives you the ability to write custom CSS and JS.

It automatically saves and applies whenever you visit the site! Not only that, you can save and share these Boosts with your team, or anyone using Arc.

Action Bar

Arc is all about efficiency, and that's different for everyone. Arc gives you everything you need to optimise your processes and make getting around the internet a breeze.

This is so important when you're doing discovery, building demos or even in the demo itself, being able to be quick and reactive to any situation.

One of the biggest changes for me is using , which you might recognise as the keyboard shortcut for "New Tab".

It's the same in Arc, but it's so much more. Much like other applications focused on efficiency this is your "Command Palette".

From here you can:

• Search any number of search engines

• Open pinned pages and pages in your history

• Take screenshots (like you've seen throughout this article)

• Access extensions

• Quick actions like enable/disable JavaScript for the current page

AI Features

Ok, so I can't write an article in 2024 without mentioning AI, after all I work for Adobe and we've been on the AI train for a long time now, first introducing AI to Acrobat to help with filling in forms many years ago!

Arc is introducing AI in interesting ways, they're creating little value add services that are just part of the browsing experience. They call these Arc Max.

With Max using initially gives you a normal on page text search, but it then turns into an AI bot that will read the whole page, and you can just ask it your questions. This is really great for discovery, without having to go to ChatGPT or Groc directly.

Max can also automatically rename your tabs and downloads to make them easier to find afterwards. This works well for tabs, less so for downloads, but still a nice value add.

AI is being thrown out left right and centre, in place of actually useful features in software. I feel that Arc is doing the right thing, adding it in to key parts of the experience as an extension of existing behaviour, rather than being the only way. Also, every AI feature is optional. If you don't like it, there's a setting to just turn it off and never thing about it again!

Final thoughts

If you've read this much, you must either be tempted to try Arc or wondering why someone takes choosing a browser so seriously.

Well considering we spend most of a 40 hour week either working in the browser, or at least with it open, my question is when did you last think about your browser choice?