How to Make Your Webinar Interactive with Cool Slide Design Hacks

Are you wondering how to make your webinar interactive with your slide decks? You’ve come to the right place. The truth is some of the most captivating webinars are super simple. Yep, it’s the simple things that count. Here’s a list of the design practices and tips you can use to create a lasting impression on your audience.

1.     Designing the Title Slide

Use your title slide to grab the attention of the audience. Often, your audience members will tune in immediately if they like what they see on the title slide. They expect the rest of the presentation to be as intriguing as the first slide. So, a dull title slide implies that the whole presentation is going to be just as dull.

2.     Using Scaffolding Slides

It’s easy for your to lose your audience during a long webinar. This is particularly true if you have a lot of slides. You can help your audience stay focused during the webinar by using something called scaffolding slides. Scaffolding slides are slides that appear throughout the presentation to highlight the parts of the webinar you’re focusing on.

In short, the scaffolding slide is the agenda slide that appears immediately after the title slide. This slide outlines the major sections of the webinar.

When you start each section, show the audience the agenda again. But highlight the current section in the title of the webinar. Scaffolding slides keep your audience members on track and give them a sense of progress that renews their focus.

3.     Alternating Slide Layouts

Another handy trick is to use alternating slides. If you have 100 slides, you don’t want to use the same format for all your slides. Your presentation will look monotonous. Instead, alternate between two or three different slide formats. Approaching slide design this way helps sustain a sense of newness and change as you move through the slides.

As a rule, you should focus on covering a single topic per slide. Avoid trying to do too much in one slide. Often, topics may seem connected. However, you’ll find you can break them down further into simpler, smaller points that your audience can consume easily.

4.     Maximize Visuals, Minimize Text

Visuals usually communicate ideas, emotions, thoughts, and even entire sentences without saying much. You shouldn’t use words when you don’t have to in your slides. Using visuals gives your audience a lot more to focus on. The impact is stronger than words alone.

5.     Use Large Fonts that Are Easily Legible

Whenever you use text, make sure to use large font sizes that are legible. After all, you want to ensure your audience can easily read the text. As a rule, do not use script fonts since they are often hard to read. And, finally, use a font size of at least 24 points on all your slides.

6.     Use Icons for Emphasis

Use icons in your slides for memorability and emphasis. With most webinar tools, you have access to thousands of icons.

Don’t just use them as fancy and attractive distractions. Instead, use them to help organize information, make a statement more memorable, and emphasize your points. Studies show that using visuals with text improves the memorability of the content. You want your audience to remember your webinar presentation.

7.     Use High-Quality Images

As mentioned earlier, visuals help make your presentation more impactful. Whenever you use images in your slides, make sure to use high-quality images. You don’t want to use blurry images as they can ruin your presentation and hurt your brand’s reputation. Images help deliver your message and showcase your products and services.

8.     Make Good Use of White Space

Don’t ignore the power of white space in your slide decks. Adding white space to your slides makes it easier for the audience to focus on the information you’re presenting. Remember, white space doesn’t necessarily refer to the color white. It refers to any unused space around the design elements.

9.     Have a Consistent Design

While switching things up does help, you should avoid using different fonts, colors, and image styles in your slides. Instead, you want to stick with your brand colors and fonts. And don’t go overboard with the colors. Mixing up these elements can make your webinar presentation look unprofessional.

Conclusion      

Webinars are an excellent tool for engaging an audience virtually from anywhere. You connect with people who rely on your insights and expertise directly. The truth is a webinar is only as good as you are engaging. This is why it’s important to incorporate smart design into your slide decks.

Having memorable and captivating slides is one of the simplest ways to improve engagement. And here’s the best part — you don’t need a pro, costly tools, and complicated software to design stellar slides. Webinar.net provides all the tools you need to create beautiful slides for your virtual events. Now you know how to make your webinar interactive.

Ready for even more tips? Check out our webinar best practices page.