How to Design Killer Webinar Slide Decks (With Templates)

An attractive slide deck plays a large role in your webinar presentation. When your slide deck looks good and is on brand, you have better chances of engaging your participants. It’s also easier for participants to remember details from your webinar considering visuals help us retain information for longer periods of time.

If you’re not a designer, you might think there is no way for you to create an attractive slide deck. But, with the use of premade PowerPoint templates, anyone can create a good-looking webinar slide deck and ensure your main pitch doesn’t go unnoticed.

In this article, we’ll cover the benefits of using a slide deck template, how to prepare your presentation, and how to customize the template to reflect your brand.

Benefits of Using a PowerPoint Template

Aside from increasing the odds of your audience staying until the end of the webinar, using a premade PowerPoint template has several benefits.

1. It Saves Time

A premade template saves you time since all of the structure is already in place. All PowerPoint templates will usually include all the possible slides you'll need such as text, image, and a combination of text and image slides. You’ll also find elements such as shapes, icons, charts, and other common elements that'll help you present data in a meaningful way.

2. You Don’t Have to Start From Scratch

Another benefit of a premade slide deck template is that since everything is already included, you don’t have to start from scratch. All you've got to do is customize the webinar slide design with your brand colors, add your content, and delete slides that you don’t need.

3. When Customized, It Helps You Build Brand Recognition

Lastly, once you customize the webinar template and reuse it for all your webinars, it helps you build brand recognition. When participants constantly see your brand colors and your logo, they'll start to recognize your brand elsewhere online.

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of using premade PowerPoint templates, let’s talk about planning the structure of your webinar which will help you customize the template.

Plan Out Your Structure

Before you dive into creating your slide deck, it pays off to plan out the structure of your webinar and create an outline of what the slide deck will include. The primary goal of your slide deck is to help your attendees understand and remember the information you're sharing so an outline helps you organize that information in a logical way.

Your basic slide deck should include the following:

• A title slide


• An intro


• A slide for each main topic


• A slide for the pitch at the end

Once you've got those slides in place, you can add additional slides that'll help you elaborate on your main topics. You can follow this structure to break down the topic of your webinar. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

1. Start With the Intro Section

It goes without saying that you shouldn't skip the Intro section. Use the title and the intro slide to introduce the topic and give your audience the overview of what will be covered. Here, you can tell them how long you expect the webinar to last, whether or not you’ll have a Q&A session if your webinar includes a special offer at the end or not, who the guest experts are if you've got them, etc.

You can also use this as an opportunity to introduce yourself and explain your background as well as why you're the expert on this topic.

2. Use Bullet Points to Explain the Main Points

Bullet points are easier to read so use them to your advantage. Refrain from using long paragraphs of text to present your ideas and stick to bullet points. However, be careful not to overuse them as this can have a negative impact on your webinar.

If you give your audience all the bullet points at once, there's a high chance they'll read all of them and tune out while they wait for you to move on to the next slide. As such, it’s a good idea to use only one bullet point per slide to keep their interest and engagement.

3. Use Graphs and Charts to Present Stats and Facts

If your webinar topic deals with a lot of data, use graphs and charts to present them. Using visual cues will help your audience understand the information better and make your presentation more interesting.

Your graphs and charts can go on additional slides to help illustrate your point. You’ll find most templates include several variations of charts and graphs that you can use throughout your presentation.

4. Plan for the Q&A Section

Leave room for the Q&A section once you’re done with the main portion of your presentation. Doing so will allow your audience to ask any additional questions they might have and get to know you even better.

Your Q&A session doesn’t need any special slides as most webinar organizers tend to switch to camera view of all the presenters.

5. Conclude with CTA at the End

The last part of your presentation should include a call-to-action that directs your audience to the next step. In this section, you can give a brief summary of what was covered, explain your offer, illustrate the benefits that are included, and provide them with a link where they can sign up or make a purchase.

Similarly to the main portion of the webinar above, you’ll want to include several slides here, each with a single bullet point to keep the engagement high.

6. Choose Your Webinar Template

Once you’ve outlined the webinar, it’s time to choose your webinar template. You can find plenty of templates on Envato Elements. These templates were designed to look good and include all the necessary elements you’d need for a successful webinar.

When choosing a webinar template, you’ll want to look for a template that's related to your industry or the topic of your webinar. You’ll also want to make sure that the template has an attractive design and the basic structure we mentioned above. When you've found the webinar template you like, purchase it and download the file to your computer.

For the purposes of this tutorials, we’ll be using the Enjoy template. This template can be used for all kinds of webinars thanks to its simple yet unique design. Enjoy also includes more than 100 slides, infographic elements, charts graphs, maps, and icons.

If you're looking for just the right webinar presentation template, review the templates in this article to get some ideas:

• Presentations
  
  
  15+ Creative Powerpoint Templates - For Presenting Your Innovative Ideas
  
  
  Sean Hodge

How to Create Webinar Slides Using a PowerPoint Template

Now that you've got a template for your webinar, it’s time to dig in and create your presentation. To start, double-click the template to open it up in PowerPoint. As you can see from the screenshot below, the Enjoy template has quite a few slides that you can use. Let’s go through the process of customizing it step by step.

Step 1. Decide Which Slides You'll Need

The first step is to choose which slides you'll keep. If you’re using the Enjoy template, you’ll notice there are a few slides that can be used to share information about your company, services, and more. The difference is in how they visually appear so you’ll have to choose your preferred webinar slide design.

If you need to duplicate a slide, right-click on it in the sidebar on the left and choose Duplicate. This is also how you can delete all the unnecessary slides. Once you know which slides you'll use, delete the rest.

Step 2. Enter Your Own Content

Now that you're left with a handful of slides, it’s time to insert your own content. In some cases, you'll be able to click directly on the text and type. Some template might require editing the master slide in which case, you’ll need to click on View > Slide Master and then type in the placeholder boxes in the master slide.

Step 3. Customize the Styles

After you've entered your own content, you can begin customizing the styles of your template. You can choose your own fonts from the font drop-down menu and you can add your own photos on appropriate slides. To add images to your presentation, double-click the Picture icon and insert your own photos.

If you want to change the background color of any slides, click on the background and then select Shape Fill. You can then choose any of the suggested colors or enter your brand colors by selecting More Fill Colors. In a similar fashion, you can change the background color of any shape used in the template.

If you've got any charts you need to edit, follow this simple 4-step process:

1. Select the chart on the slide that you want to change. You’ll notice a new Chart Tools contextual tab at the top of the PowerPoint window.


2. Under Chart Tools, on the Design tab, in the Data group, click Edit Data with Microsoft Excel.


3. Excel will open in a new window and displays the worksheet for the selected chart. In that worksheet, click the cell that contains the data that you want to change, and then enter the new information.


4. When you’re done, close the Excel file. PowerPoint will then refresh and save the chart automatically.

Step 4. Review the Presentation

Once you’re done with entering your webinar content and styling the template, you can review the presentation. As you’re reviewing it, make sure that the content is free of typos and that you’ve replaced all the information. You’ll also want to make sure that the transitions are set the way you like them.

If you need to edit any transitions, go to the Transitions tab and select Custom Transitions. A dialogue box will appear on the right, showing the current effects on that slide. From there, you can tweak and edit the settings.

Tips for Spicing Up the Webinar Slide Design

Now that your template is all set, here are a few extra tips that'll help you spice up your slide deck design.

1. Make Sure Images Are High Quality

Images can help you deliver your message and showcase your company and your key employees. However, you've got to make sure that images are of high quality. If your images are blurry, it can ruin your presentation and hurt your brand reputation.

2. Use Icons to Make Your Webinar Slide Design More Attractive

Another way to spice up your slide deck is to use icons to make your design more attractive. You can use icons to represent your services or your goals and any other part of your presentation.

A good idea is to use an icon font like FontAwesome. You can also use icons like Dashicons that allow you to copy various glyphs and use them where you need them.

3. Use Legible Fonts and Larger Font Sizes

Lastly, make sure to use legible fonts and larger font sizes to ensure your audience can easily read the text. As a rule of thumb, avoid using script fonts as they're quite hard to read and use at least 24 pt for font size.

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Design a Killer Webinar Slide Deck With A PowerPoint Template

With the right template, structure, and a little bit of time, anyone can design a killer webinar slide deck. Get started on yours by finding the perfect PowerPoint template for your webinar presentation and then use the tips in this article to help you create an outstanding slide deck. Good luck!