How many slides should be in a presentation/webinar?

The service functions of illustrations were well known in the Middle Ages, “slide” from the 15th century Book of Kings (C)

For your convenience, we have summarized the most popular views on the title issue into three principle solutions, each of which, based on our experience, has their strengths and weaknesses. Conventionally, we called them “Drop”, “Rain” and “Downpour”.

Drop

This is a minimalistic approach centered on the principle that illustration is not needed if it can be dispensed with. This style’s norm is one slide / illustration for every five minutes of presentation time. The primary argument in favor of the Drop is as follows: One of the most important components of a webinar / presentation is forming a sense of trust in the presenter, which is achieved, among other things, through eye contact. According to scientific research, people learn to focus on the faces of speakers from infancy.

Each illustration breaks eye contact, and the remote meeting format is already challenging in terms of maintaining audience focus. Therefore, you should use pictures only at the beginning of the presentation, at the end and in moments of transition between sections. If the presentation is shorter than five minutes, then, according to some supporters of this approach, it is worth considering how to do without illustrations at all.

It is worth noting that choosing the Drop approach does not mean that less time will be spent working with illustrations. The need to use a minimum of illustrations makes us especially careful in finding suitable pictures and mounting slides.

Rain

This solution can be called the classic format. It involves using one slide for every 30 seconds - two minutes. Two popular presentation formulas speak in its favor: the 10:20:30 Rule (10 illustrations, 20 minutes, 30 sentences) and the 1=1 Rule (the number of illustrations is equal to the number of presentation / webinar minutes).

Practice suggests that the Rain style is preferred by most presenters, and many do it intuitively, without calculating the ratio of slides to minutes with a stopwatch. This is not surprising - not everyone feels confident in the role of a speaker, for fear of forgetting, missing or distorting something. This can happen even to an experienced speaker, especially in situations where it is inconvenient to read text from a screen or sheet. Rain allows you to avoid this, since all the main theses and conclusions are recorded on the slides.

Downpour

This option provides an approximate density of five illustrations per minute. It is a solution for those who believe that the perfect presentation should be completely transposed into slides. In essence, the Downpour format turns the narrator into a voice-over or completely excludes them from the presentation.

Admirers of this solution believe that the constant change of pictures allows you to better hold the audience’s attention and that it has the advantage of the presentation being watched without sound and easily used in a recording. The disadvantages of the “Downpour” approach include its laboriousness and the fact that the high density of visual information overloads and tires the audience. In addition, it is obvious that versions of Downpour without a presenter exclude or seriously impede contact with the audience in real time.

Let's summarize:

Whichever style you choose, we recommend using the following general principle: Analyze the scenario and identify key ideas, messages, statements, and conclusions. Add to them a common title, transitions between sections, and an ending. This way you will get an indicative list of those segments of the presentation / webinar where, theoretically, illustrations are appropriate. Having it in front of your eyes will make it much easier to decide how many and what kind of illustrations you need.

Good luck to everyone and high income growth! And remember, Roi4Presenter is the best service for webinars and presentations!

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Source ROI4PRESENTER Blog.