As ubiquitous as PowerPoint is, it can be a confusing and sometimes scary tool to people. What do all these buttons do? Do I really need to use animations? How do I even know what a good slide really looks like?
If you’ve ever felt like PowerPoint was a little overwhelming, then this is the post for you. We looked back over years of working with major clients to create presentations, and pulled out 10 of the most common mistakes that we see presenters make.
The good news is, each of these mistakes has an easy fix, and once you learn a few of them, you’ll start to see the overall quality of your presentations skyrocket. So let’s take a look at the 10 most common PowerPoint mistakes that people make, and some ways to correct them. Let’s get to it!
PowerPoint Mistake #1: Overloading slides with text
The problem: Perhaps the most common of all PowerPoint mistakes is simply using too much text on slides. It’s an understandable mistake: if you’re the one writing up the text, it can be hard to judge what “too much” looks like.
But when you overload a slide with text, you make it that much harder for the audience to understand the point you’re trying to make. The more they have to sift through, the more distracted their attention becomes, and the harder it is to pick out the key point you want to express.
The solution: To reduce your on-slide text problem, start with the mindset that you won’t be reading each word on your slide directly. Your audience will read faster than you will speak, so they’ll end up reading ahead and just waiting for you to catch up.
Ideally, you’ll pick one key idea to focus on for each slide. From there, all of your content should ladder up and support that point. Anything that strays from that point should be removed, in order to keep focus on your content.
PowerPoint Mistake #2: Relying only on bullet points
The problem: Reducing the content on your slides is an essential step in refining your presentation, but too many presenters see the bullet point as an all-purpose solution to every presentation copy situation. The challenge with bullets is that they break up content into separate chunks, and can make big ideas feel small.
The solution: The goal is to keep the audience interested throughout the presentation, so the last thing you want is for each slide to blend together and not stand out. And while bullet points are great, they can’t be the only way you treat your text.
Instead, you should look for ways to break up the style of your text, both on individual slides and in-between slides. This could mean focusing on a few big call outs in support of your bullet points, like a pull-quote that’s treated with a unique style. Or it could be swapping text for photos or icons, adding data visualizations, or finding other ways to mix up your content to keep the audience excited.
PowerPoint Mistake #3: Cluttered slide layouts
The problem: Much like too much text, adding too much to the visuals of your slide can confuse your audience and detract from your main points. Often presenters overlook the clutter because they see the main point clearly when they look at the slide, but for an audience that’s not familiar with the content, this likely won’t be the result.
The solution:
There are plenty of tactical solutions you can experiment with, such as adjusting white space, aligning elements, and creating a hierarchy of information. But what we really encourage you to focus on is creating “scannable” slides.
Scannable slides are easy for the audience to understand at a glance. They have a balanced layout and ample white space, but most importantly, they have a clear focus on a single main idea. In other words, the audience can scan your slide and take in the content without much effort.
PowerPoint Mistake #4: Ignoring slide consistency
The problem: When slides get pulled in from existing decks and repurposed for a new presentation, it’s easy for templates to get mixed up, colors to get swapped, and chaos to follow.
The solution: A PowerPoint template is the foundation of a consistent presentation. But even if you have a good template, you can still end up with inconsistent slides. Here’s why.
When you paste in an old slide, PowerPoint will default to updating it to match your current template. That may not be what you want, and can lead to confusion and extra work. Instead, paste the specific content into your slides, rather than the entire slide into your new presentation.
PowerPoint Mistake #5: Not tailoring your content to the audience
The problem: It’s a common practice to reuse slides (or even whole presentations) over and over again. On the one hand, this makes sense. Your product pitch is your product pitch, after all, and the features don’t change depending on your audience.
But the fact is, not all audiences are the same. Some want to see hard facts and figures, some want a softer sell, and some might not want to hear much from you at all. In order to effectively reach an audience, you need to adjust the way you present your content each time.
The solution: Before you start pulling slides or building a new presentation deck, take a few minutes to understand and assess your audience. Think about who is in the room (for example, their titles, interests, potential preferences, etc) and what they want to hear from you.
Then, as you flow in your content, look for ways to dial up the details that might resonate with your audience. This could be as simple as swapping in more images for text, or adding additional data visualizations to your story.
The point is not to start from scratch and build out new content each time. Rather, it’s for you to think about how you can frame your existing content to better connect with your audience.
PowerPoint Mistake #6: Not engaging the audience
The problem: Ok, so you adjusted your slides to better fit your audience’s information preferences. But just changing the content isn’t enough to get them engaged with your content. You can’t assume that, just because they are in the room, that they are attentive and focused on your message. Instead, you need to take steps to draw them in and get them excited about what you have to say.
The solution: There are two primary ways a presenter can connect with the audience: indirectly through storytelling techniques, and directly through engagement techniques.
One of the most effective ways that presenters get the audience engaged is through storytelling techniques. With storytelling, you draw on people’s innate interest in stories as a way to build emotional investment and create lasting memories, and use those benefits to support your content. By structuring your content like a story, with a clear intro and conclusion and a series of challenges that the narrative helps overcome, you build in a natural sense of connection between your audience and your content.
The other side, direct engagement techniques, involves finding moments to get your audience involved in the presentation, such as calls to action, Q&As, and other tools. These can vary based on your content and personal style, but as a complement to your larger story, they are simple but powerful tools for building excitement.
PowerPoint Mistake #7: Using too many fonts
The problem: You want to create some excitement, or make some text stand out. Next thing you know, you’ve got a headline style, subhead style, body style, call-out style, footnote style, and every slide looks like it came from a different presentation.
One typeface (Arial in this example) often creates a more professional look
Unpredictable font substitution. Arial, calibri, georgia…System fonts ensure compatibility when sharing with others
The solution: More type doesn’t mean more visual, and it doesn’t always help the audience. Instead, you should focus on sticking to 1-2 fonts across your entire presentation. This helps you to focus the layouts and remove clutter, and it helps your audience to know what content is key on each slide.
PowerPoint Mistake #8: Overusing animations and transitions
The problem: Using animations and slide transitions is a great way to add motion, energy, and drama to a presentation. But once you start discovering all the things PowerPoint can do, it’s easy to start layering in star wipes, dissolves, floats, fades and more. Next thing you know, everything is moving and your slides look more like a vintage screensaver than a presentation tool.
The solution:
Using fades and animations can be a great tool, when used in moderation. But generally, unless you have a very specific vision for using animation, we recommend most presenters stick to one simple version: the fade transition.
A fade offers a perfect balance of subtlety and simplicity, adding a little something extra to your presentation without being too distracting. You can use it as a transition between slides (which is our favorite way), or as an animation on a slide. Try it both ways first, and once you get used to using this technique, you can start experimenting with other animations and ways to spice up your slides.
PowerPoint Mistake #9: Using low-quality images
The problem: Many presenters turn to a quick web search to find pics to drop onto their slides. But by copying an image from a search, rather than turning to a corporate DAM or stock photo site, they often end up with pixelated, low-quality images that bring down the overall quality of the entire presentation.
The solution: Finding high-quality images is about both finding the right resolution without making the file too big. Your images should be crisp and clear, but be careful not to choose an image that’s too large, as this can cause issues with your saved file. Luckily, there’s a quick fix: just compress the images to 150 ppi (File > Compress Pictures…) or crop out any unused parts.
PowerPoint Mistake #10: Lack of contrast between text and background
The problem: For presentations using branded color palettes, or those going for a minimalist look, it can be easy to accidentally end up with text that’s too similar to the background color. This problem can be exacerbated by projectors or room lights that wash out your colors, making slides almost unreadable. Beyond the issues of an audience struggling with reading your content, a lack of contrast also lacks the accessibility features that make your presentation available to all audience members.
Contrast is the difference between various elements within a design that makes them stand out from each other.
The solution: The simplest way to ensure your text is accessible and readable to your audience is to make sure you have a clear contrast between the color of your text and your slide background. To an extent, this is clearly visible by the naked eye, but when in doubt, Microsoft offers an Accessibility Checker tool right inside PowerPoint.
Conclusion
If you ever create or deliver a presentation, chances are that you could benefit from at least one of these tips. But even if it’s more than one, don’t get overwhelmed by all the things you can work on in your presentation. Instead of trying to implement everything at once, look at the areas that stand out as needing the most attention, and focus on making changes there first.
For more ways to learn, check out all of our presentation resources. You’ll get pro-tier tips and actionable insights for any presentation type, with new content added all the time.
About the author
Kyle Kartz is the Creative Director of Storytelling at VerdanaBold. He is an expert copywriter and strategist, with experience driving major campaigns for global brands in multiple industries. He is passionate about communications, the outdoors, and cooking.
