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Animations in Business Presentations: Dos and Don’ts

PowerPoint presentations can be fun to work with, if a bit challenging. If you would like to give animations a try for your next business presentation, we have some dos and don’ts for you here.

Use Animations to Keep Your Audience Interested

You sometimes need to cram a lot of facts into a business presentation. However, you still need to keep your audience interested.

To complicate matters further, PowerPoint continues to evolve. The software has new features every year, including new ways to incorporate animations.

However, you can learn to use these new features in your business presentations and make them more powerful. To add animations, follow these dos and don’ts click here

Animation Dos

Make things easy on yourself by choosing free PowerPoint templates that you can then easily customize for your own purposes. If you decide to animate the transitions between slides or even a few slides within that presentation, here are some simple rules to follow:

  • When using the fade-out effect, make sure it looks intentional
  • A wiping off of an object should be like an eraser rubbing it off a white board
  • If you want to use the zoom effect, it generally works best to zoom in from a distance then give the audience a closer look

The key to having a great presentation is to stick to similar animations throughout. Maintaining consistency is the most important factor for a professional business presentation.

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It is also important to understand your audience and design your presentation accordingly. For example, you would want to design one presentation for a group of potential investors and another presentation to a group of new hires.

If you wish to tell a story or make the audience understand a process, PowerPoint will make that easy for you.

The key is simplicity. Keep backgrounds simple and animations to a minimum for all of your presentations. Then you will be more successful with walking your audience through the project and making your point.

The Don’ts

There are certain things you should avoid when using animations in a PowerPoint presentation:

  • Don’t over-use images or graphics. This can make your entire presentation look confusing and amateurish. In other words, use all elements, including animations, in elegant ways.
  • Don’t include too much on one slide. Instead, place only one or two points on a single slide. Including too much on one slide will make your presentation cluttered and clumsy.
  • Use animations, sounds, and transitions only minimally.
  • Avoid hard-to-read colors and fonts. Instead, choose fonts and colors that contrast with the background.
  • Also avoid extremely bright colors that could strain audience members’ eyes.

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A Final Word About Using Animations in Business Presentations

Create a customized background using slides that are all the same size. This will provide professional-looking data visualization throughout your entire presentation.

Remember that your presentation’s ultimate goal is to convey a message, so don’t get carried away with using animation or any other PowerPoint feature.

Above all, remember that your slide presentation represents your organization to the outside world. The dos and don’ts we offer here can help you to create a presentation that will do that well.