Microdemo Starter Playbook: Ship an Indexable Playable in 72 Hours

Write a single-page brief that makes the demo actionable for a contractor. Include: one-sentence concept, primary conversion goal (e.g., email capture, invite, signup), target audience, success metrics, and the minimal interaction that proves value. Keep the demo scope to one core loop — no more than three micro-interactions.

Add explicit acceptance criteria so handoffs are unambiguous. Each criterion should be testable and short (e.g., “Landing HTML contains H1 and 3 bullets describing the demo; Playable area reachable with keyboard; JSON‑LD SoftwareApplication present on canonical URL”). These criteria become your QA checklist and contract milestones.

Make the page crawler‑friendly by ensuring real HTML contains the page title, H1, 2–3 sentence summary, and 3 bullets that describe the demo. The interactive area can be client-side, but the teaser and metadata must be present in the initial HTML the host serves so crawlers and social previews read meaningful content.

Use ARIA landmarks, semantic elements, and keyboard‑operable controls. Wrap the playable area in a landmark (role="region" with aria-label) and ensure every control is a native button or link with an accessible name. This preserves usability for keyboard and assistive-technology users while making the demo audit‑ready.

Add JSON‑LD structured data in the page head using schema.org types that match your goal. For most microdemos use SoftwareApplication or HowTo snippets so search engines understand the product and the play flow. Include name, description, url, image, author, and an interactionTarget or potentialAction describing the playable. Keep fields concise and truthful.

If your demo is a simplified how‑to, include a HowTo JSON‑LD with expected steps and estimated time. For product demos, include SoftwareApplication with sameAs for canonical product pages. Always keep the JSON‑LD synchronized with the visible HTML (don’t claim features you don’t expose in the demo).

Choose a static host and make sure public routes return crawler-ready HTML. If you use a client-side bundle (Vite, CRA, etc.), add prerendering or an SSR/static generation step so each key URL returns complete HTML at request time. Platforms like Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages and GitHub Pages all support static deployments; pick the one matching your CI familiarity.

Final deploy checklist: confirm canonical URL, title and meta description, JSON‑LD block, accessible play control, keyboard tests, image fallback for non-JS agents, correct HTTP status (200), and sitemap inclusion. If you can’t fully SSR, run a prerender step (Prerender.io or Netlify prerender extension) to serve cached HTML snapshots to crawlers.

Produce a contractor-ready ZIP that includes: README with one-page brief and acceptance criteria, a small runnable project (index.html, assets, play.js), pasteable JSON‑LD snippets, test checklist, and a simple CI example (GitHub Action or Netlify _redirects and build settings) that builds and deploys on push.

Include a short QA script for the reviewer: steps to validate HTML content, run the keyboard accessibility checklist, check JSON‑LD with a JSON‑LD playground or Google’s Rich Results test, and inspect the prerendered HTML snapshot (or fetch the page as a crawler user‑agent). This minimizes back-and-forth and aligns expectations for the 72‑hour timeline.