How to Make Effective Presentation Slides: 5 Smart Strategies

Though the tech we use in our corporate day-to-day has changed a lot in the past decade, one central business practice remains the same: the presentation.

In today’s corporate world, most information, sales, and important decisions are still made in meetings with presentations, either face-to-face or online. And while some important presentations, like investment pitches or important sales decks, warrant hiring a professional presentation designer, most of us still create our slides ourselves.

That's where these practical strategies come in. They are tried and tested techniques used by seasoned presentation designers—and they don’t require any design skills!

5 ways to make your presentation slides more effective

Here are strategies to make your audience nod in agreement as you present:

1. Put your main insights into the slide titles

Most slides have titles that say nothing about the content of the slide. Common titles are "Our Team,” “About Us,” or “Project Update.”

The title area of your slide, however, is the most important real estate of the slide. If you have a busy or distracted audience, they may not read all of the details on your slide. But if they read anything, it’ll be your titles. To make your deck more persuasive, every title should contain the main insight of the slide.

Before:

 

After:

 

2. Visually emphasize your main point

I have worked on a lot of pitch decks, and have revised a lot of charts and tables that could be strengthened by adding emphasis on a main number or insight.

Think about it: tables, charts, and paragraphs of text can appear long and complex. They require mental strain and processing power to process. Now, put yourself in your audience’s shoes. They’re bombarded with huge amounts of information every day. So how can you visually improve your presentation? Add a visual emphasis to an important column or a trend in your chart.

Visual emphasis reduces the cognitive load of your audience, so it requires less work to process and understand your takeaway and ensures that your main insight is understood. By showing where the emphasis ought to be, it also helps clarify other sections of the slide.

Here are before and after examples of the same chart, showing how adding visual emphasis adds clarity:

 

3. Let an image tell the story

Images communicate in a way words cannot. Research has shown that we process an image 60,000 times faster than text, so it’s no wonder that the effects of images are so strong for us—we’re built to gather our information this way.

When you find a high-resolution, quality image to help tell your story, you’ll be doing both yourself and your audience a huge favor. I’m not talking about cheesy, cliched, and overused images (like a man pulling at his hair in front of a computer to represent office frustrations). I’m talking about high-quality images that feel authentic.

When I’m looking for the right image, I often take a full 15 minutes searching through images with a variety of prompts to find the perfect one. Don’t settle for the first image you find if it doesn’t quite fit. When you find the perfect image, it’s often the only design your slide will need—because images are that powerful.

Here are before and after examples showing the power of including the right image. Both of these slides have compelling, well-researched content discussing the problems of loneliness in aging. But which would you rather see in a presentation about the topic? Which pulls you in and makes you want to know more?

Before:

After:

 

4. Ask the audience a question before an important reveal

If there's an important point that you want to become one of your talk’s big takeaways, pause before you reveal the big insight and present a "question" slide before revealing the answer. The question you pose should be thought-provoking and encourage your audience to reflect and speculate on the correct answer.

Example of a question slide:

Pausing with a question slide has several benefits:

• If you’ve been talking for a while, it regains the attention of an audience, reengaging those who may have become distracted.

• The anticipation before the reveal makes it a memorable moment people are likely to take away with them. Whether you confirm an answer or surprise people with a different response, having to think will engage the audience more fully in your topic than if you had simply stated the answer in the middle of a long talk.

• After the audience engages in the question, all eyes will be on you when you reveal the answer. Sheer curiosity will make people wait and look, ensuring that in your most important moment, their attention is on you and not on their phones and tablets.

 

5. One story per slide

For a more effective slideshow and to ensure your audience doesn't get confused or bored, aim to have a single story per slide. There is no such thing as having too many slides, and people worry about that needlessly. My 30-minute webinar has 96 slides, and if I need to break up more slides in the future or add more, I wouldn’t think twice about it.

The benefits of having a single message per slide include:

• A more frequent change of visuals keeps people engaged and brings their attention back when the screen changes.

• You are not boring your audience. You've probably experienced presentations where the slides are packed with information, and the presenter stays on the same slide for a long time while you've already read ahead and are waiting for them to catch up. You want to avoid that.

• It prevents information overload and improves clarity. Breaking up slides also ensures that you avoid dense, cluttered, or confusing slides and tiny type.

Note: there are disciplines and situations in which slides need to be more packed, such as with complex technical diagrams or investment pitch decks where there are expectations on slide number, order, and content.

 

Effective slide presentation FAQs