10 Common Mistakes Presenters Make with PowerPoint Slides
At the center of any great presentation is an engaging and informative set of slides that perfectly accompany the spoken words coming out of your mouth. Because of stage fright, many people prioritize practicing their speaking over nailing their PowerPoint presentation. This leads to common mistakes that many presenters seem to make when it comes to crafting PowerPoint slides.
But you don’t want to be like everyone else, right? You want your presentation to stand out. So, allow us to walk you through some of the most common mistakes we see people make with their presentations, whether at work or in a class, and what you can do to fix them.
Common Mistakes People Make When Delivering and Creating PowerPoint Presentations
Too Much Text
Perhaps the most common mistake people make is including too much text in their slides. A PowerPoint presentation is just that, a presentation. It isn’t meant to be a fully informative document. The slides are meant to sum up the information, highlight key details and ultimately complement you as the presenter. Most of your presentation should be you speaking about the slides.
If you feel like you just can’t cut back on your slide text, then consider a different medium for conveying the information. Perhaps a PDF or other type of file is better suited for the more thorough content you’re trying to make.
How to fix it: Cut out everything except the most important details. Stick to numbers and/or straight facts. You can provide more context when you present it to your classmates or coworkers.
[Read more: How Much Text on a Slide is Too Much?]
Reading Directly from Slides
Making that first mistake often leads to making this second mistake as well. When you have too much text on your slides it becomes too tempting to rely on it for all your speaking. Many presenters will simply read from the text on the slide instead of putting things into their own words or providing additional context. Your audience can see and read what is on the slide already… you don’t need to read it for them.
How to fix it: Limit your slide text using the tips above, but also, practice your presentation ahead of time so you have some idea of what to say. Jotting down speaker notes is helpful for this.
Poor Design
It doesn’t matter what content is at the heart of your presentation… if your overall design looks unprofessional or sloppy, your presentation is likely going to come across as such. Now, you probably don’t have time to work on your slide design skills before your next presentation, but if you do, consider checking out some basic tips from Harvard.
How to fix it: If you don’t have the time to refine your design skills, the easiest thing you can do is pick a template and stick to it. PowerPoint has some of its own, but a simple Google search can pull up others as well.
[A professional-looking PowerPoint presentation includes…]
Too Many Animations and Transitions
You might remember when you were first learning how to use PowerPoint as a kid. It was fun to play with all the animations and transitions, having your slides zoom in and fade out. While there might be a place for that, it’s generally not necessary or well-received in the real world. In school and in the workplace, it is seen mostly as a distraction.
How to fix it: Just don’t use slide transitions, but if you do, keep it simple.
Inconsistent Formatting
Picking a template can help a lot with maintaining consistent formatting across all your slides. But template or no template, it can still be easy to make formatting mistakes such as different font sizes for headings, conflicting fonts, inconsistent colors, etc.
How to fix it: Choosing a template helps. You can also consider writing down the fonts, font sizes, etc. that you’ve chosen for your presentation so that it’s easy to stick to them when creating new slides. Even simpler is to get in the habit of duplicating an existing slide anytime you want to add a new slide to your presentation so that the formatting carries over.
Data Overload
If you were to use the analogy of food for PowerPoint presentations, slides would be more like a bite-sized snack than a full meal. While your overall presentation can suffer from data overload, sometimes it is unavoidable. What can help it is breaking your content into bite-sized pieces, or slides.
How to fix it: Don’t be afraid to add more slides if it’s necessary. If one of your slides feels too busy or has too much information, break it out into two or three slides.
Lack of Structure
Sometimes presenters start creating their slides before they’ve fully fleshed out their presentation structure. This causes confusion and audience whiplash. It can make it difficult to stay focused when the presenter doesn’t have a clear structure, and it makes it difficult for you as the presenter to present the slides with a clean flow.
How to fix it: Consider the data and information you want to present and put it into a clear structure before you start building out your slides.
Ignoring the Audience
If you have a fear of public speaking, as many people do, you might be tempted to just power through your presentation and get it over with as quickly as possible. This usually means ignoring the audience, which creates a poor experience for them.
How to fix it: Consider including a question-and-answer slide at the end of your presentation or at various intervals to give your audience a chance to engage. You might also periodically ask, “Does this make sense?” or “Is everyone following along OK?” to communicate to your audience that you’re there to help them understand the information, not just talk at them.
Bad Image Quality
The quantity of images that makes sense for your slides is up to you, but if you use images, they should be high quality. This means no blurry photos, images can be seen and understood even from a distance, images are relevant, etc.
How to fix it: Use stock photos when it makes sense to ensure high quality images.
No Clear Summary or Call to Action
You should always leave your audience with something to take away from your presentation. Too many presentations simply end, leaving the audience with nothing to consider, and therefore, not being impacted by the presentation.
How to fix this: Consider the purpose of your presentation. Then, reflect on that purpose to close out the presentation on your final slide. This might mean establishing next steps or summarizing key points.
How to Fix All These PowerPoint Mistakes
At Apps Do Wonders, we’ve considered all of these common presentation problems and recognize the challenges they create for people when creating and presenting their slides. So, we did something about it by creating our ChatGPT for PowerPoint add-in. Whether it’s generating speaker notes, editing text or finding a modern, professional template, our tool can handle all of this for you in just a few minutes.