The Indexable Playable Checklist: Ship an Installless Demo That Ranks, Converts, and Passes Accessibility in 90 Minutes

Decide the single demo route you’ll expose to search crawlers and users. Keep scope minimal: one responsive page with a headline, the playable area, 3 feature bullets, and a CTA. Prerender only public demo routes; never snapshot pages containing tokens, user IDs, or private data.

Create a demo fixture endpoint or a read‑only sandbox API for the demo so the prerendered snapshot and public traffic never touch production write paths. Replace real backend calls in demo routes with canned responses to avoid accidental signups, payments, or data leaks.

Render the demo route server-side or produce a prerendered static snapshot. The goal is an HTML response that contains the demo shell and the JSON‑LD block so crawlers and social previews see meaningful content without running client JavaScript.

If you use frameworks (Next.js, Astro, SvelteKit, Remix), use their static prerender or server-side rendering features for the demo route. If you have a SPA, add a build step that outputs an indexable demo HTML file and serve it from your CDN as a public page.

Add a concise JSON‑LD block that describes the demo as a SoftwareApplication or WebApplication and includes a PlayAction or potentialAction describing the play experience. Include name, short description, url, image, isAccessibleForFree, and offers only if they are demo‑safe.

Keep the JSON‑LD consistent with visible page content. This helps search engines and link preview tools understand the page and can enable rich snippets (PlayAction, SoftwareApplication, FAQ entries). Validate your JSON‑LD with a playground/validator before deploying.

Design the demo so it degrades gracefully to semantic HTML and works with keyboard and assistive technologies. Wrap interactive area in a <div role="region" aria-label="Playable demo">, ensure every control is a semantic <button> or <a> (or has proper role and accessible name), and make all interactions keyboard operable (Tab, Enter, Space, arrow keys where applicable).

Follow WAI‑ARIA patterns and the keyboard guidance from MDN: focus management, visible focus styles, skip links if necessary, and ARIA live regions only when needed. Automated tools catch presence issues; manual keyboard and screen‑reader tests verify real usability.

If you designed the demo in Figma, export assets and a minimal HTML/CSS prototype using a Figma-to-code plugin (TeleportHQ, Anima, or community 'prototype to code' plugins). Export the hero image, logo, and any SVGs; copy minimal CSS and inline critical styles in the prerendered HTML to reduce render-blocking.

Commit the prerendered HTML and demo fixtures, run your build (or upload to the CDN), and deploy the single demo page. Use a short deploy command (for many static sites: npm run build && npx netlify deploy --prod --dir=out or your host's equivalent) so you can verify the live page quickly.