The best presentation slides during Zoom meetings have well-thought-out designs. A general rule for making slides is that less is more. Each slide in a presentation should focus on a single topic. Here are a few tips to help you deliver more effective presentations during Zoom meetings.
1. Stay Focused On the Message
Every slide in your presentation should include relevant information. It can be helpful to outline your presentation and ensure that every slide contributes to the overall purpose of your presentation. You can also organize a presentation into sections to communicate information effectively.
If you are still determining whether a slide contributes to your presentation, consider what your audience would lose if the preceding slide transitioned directly to the following slide. If the missing information is crucial for understanding your presentation, you know that a slide is necessary and can focus on clearly conveying the information.
2. Create a Consistent Look & Feel
The best slide presentation design is consistent across every slide. This starts with selecting a color theme. While you might color-code sections of a presentation by emphasizing different colors from a consistent palette, the background colors of slides, font sizes and colors of headings, and regular text should stay consistent throughout a slideshow.
Slide backgrounds, brand logos, and other stylistic features should also be consistent across slides. Slides may feature unique images or icons, but these visual elements should be presented similarly. One of the best ways to make slides look consistent is to include the same brand logo or other information on every slide or title slide for each presentation section.
3. Consider Topics Transitions & Less Text
Planning the flow of your presentation can help you make better slides. Use topics to make a presentation easier to follow. Slide transitions provide a seamless way to advance from one point to the next. Using the same effect for most slides in a presentation is a good idea. Varying transitions between each slide can be distracting. A fade effect is a subtle way to move through a presentation.
The best slides only include as much information as your audience can easily absorb during the display time. The old 1-6-6 rule for PowerPoint that each slide should contain at most six bullets with six words per line often leads to crowded slides. Text-heavy slides can distract your audience by giving them too much to read or making them feel the need to take notes rather than pay attention.
4. Add Visuals
Visualizations are the best way to present data in presentations. Your audience can get bogged down in long lists of figures. If you show charts or tables, opt for simple styles that are easy to read rather than distracting colored tables.
Adding relevant images or videos that match a slide's content and the presentation's message can enhance a presentation. Choose from original photos, stock images, or icons, but avoid including unrelated images that could distract your audience. Visual slide presentation themes can also make a presentation look more cohesive.
You should plan how to share PowerPoint or Keynote slides during a Zoom meeting. Consider whether you will control presentation and meeting features on a single screen or have access to more than one monitor. You can split or merge the video feed with your presentation and design slides accordingly. Using virtual backgrounds from Custom Virtual Office and making better slides are two of the best ways to increase the effectiveness of remote presentations.