Presentations have become the modern currency of communication. From business and sales meetings to product launches, presentations are everywhere. Yet, many professionals still make critical mistakes that compromise their message, confidence, and business outcomes. As we move through 2025, it’s time to leave behind outdated practices and move towards presentation strategies that reflect clarity, storytelling, and audience-centricity.
Whether you're designing a sales presentation, an investor pitch deck, a corporate presentation, or even showcasing a new product presentation, let’s get into what you should avoid.
The most common mistakes to ditch in 2025
1. Dumping Information Instead of Designing a Story
Presentations are not meant to be documents, they’re meant to be experiences for the audience. One of the biggest mistakes professionals make is cramming slides with bullet points and lengthy paragraphs. This overwhelms the audience, reduces attention span, and fails to inspire action.
Instead, focus on designing a presentation that communicates one idea per slide. Use clean layouts, minimal text, and visual storytelling elements that align with your message. If you’re unsure how to do this, consider working with a presentation design agency that specializes in clarity-driven visuals and layout logic.
2. Neglecting Structure: No Beginning, Middle, or End
A good presentation follows a logical journey, just like a story. But most decks feel like a scattered set of slides, with no narrative thread.
To fix this, start with a looking at a few guides to designing different presentations or structured templates. Build a clear arc: define the problem, introduce your idea or product, support it with data, and close with a compelling call to action. This applies to corporate presentations, sales decks, and especially investor presentations, where the stakes are high.
This narrative structure taps into the neuroscience and psychology of storytelling, helping your audience connect emotionally and remember more.
3. Inconsistent Design
Another mistake to leave behind is poorly designed decks that feature inconsistent fonts, mismatched colors, awkward spacing, or generic stock images.
Using professional, branded presentation templates ensures uniformity across teams and touchpoints. A template customized by a presentation design agency might be your best bet as it maintains consistency and brand identity across all your presentations**.**
4. Forgetting the Audience
Many presenters build slides around what they want to say, rather than what the audience needs to hear. A sales presentation for a client is not the same as a corporate deck for board members.
Customize your language, visuals, and tone depending on your audience's priorities. Research their challenges, industry trends, and expectations. This is especially critical for investor pitch decks, where demonstrating insight and empathy builds trust.
5. Over-Animation and Slide Gimmicks
While motion can enhance engagement, overdoing animations is distracting. Excessive transitions, pop-ins, or spinning icons disrupt flow and professionalism, especially in conference and event presentations and virtual meetings.
Instead, use animations selectively, to reveal step-by-step processes or emphasize key takeaways. Subtle transitions maintain rhythm without stealing focus.
6. Reading from Slides
One of the most common sins? Reading aloud from the screen. This breaks engagement and signals a lack of preparation.
If you're nervous about delivery, practice the way you deliver presentations and find ways to master your presentation delivery. Rehearse with a timer, record yourself, and focus on key points rather than full paragraphs. Use speaker notes or cue cards to keep eye contact and connection.
7. Too Many (or Too Few) Slides
There’s no magic number for how many slides a presentation should have, but there is such a thing as too much or too little. Jamming 50 slides into a 15-minute talk overwhelms your audience, while a single slide with five minutes of talking becomes dull.
Refer to the principles in “how many slides should you have in a presentation” to guide your deck length. A helpful rule? One slide per minute of talk time is a good baseline, provided each slide is focused, clear, and relevant.
8. Ending with “Thank You” Instead of a CTA
Many presenters end with a bland "Thank you" slide. While polite, it leaves your audience wondering: “So, what now?”
Whether you're closing a sales presentation, wrapping up a corporate meeting, or finalizing an investor pitch deck, always end with clarity. What do you want your audience to do? Invest? Schedule a meeting? Approve a proposal?
If you’re unsure how to close well, check out our blog on how to end a presentation right to create memorable conclusions that move people to act.
9. Ignoring Visual Psychology
Slides aren’t just for displaying information, they’re tools for persuasion. Yet most presenters overlook how layout, color, and hierarchy affect perception.
Use warm colors to evoke trust in product presentations. Apply contrast to highlight critical data in sales decks. Keep whitespace to reduce cognitive load in presentations. This is the visual side of storytelling, and it matters more than ever in 2025.
A good presentation design agency understands how to use design psychology to subtly influence decision-making, and that’s what you should always look for if you’re considering paying for a professional presentation design service.
10. Not Rehearsing Enough
A polished deck means nothing if the presenter fumbles. Skipping rehearsal is one of the costliest mistakes, especially when presenting in high-stakes settings like boardrooms, investor calls, or live conferences.
Practice out loud. Refine transitions. Get feedback. Whether you're solo or working with a team, preparation ensures confidence and control. This is particularly critical for remote or hybrid event presentations, where technical issues can already be a hurdle.
As we leave behind outdated presentation practices in 2025, one powerful shift gaining momentum is the use of smart, brand-aligned presentation templates. No longer just a set of static slides, today's templates are dynamic frameworks designed to support clarity, consistency, and creative storytelling, across everything. But here’s the catch- even the best templates can grow outdated or clunky over time if not regularly reviewed. That’s why knowing how to audit your existing presentation templates is critical for keeping your communication sharp, on-brand, and ready for any stage.
How to Audit Your Existing Presentation Templates for 2025
Presentation templates are the unsung heroes of brand communication. Whether you’re pitching to internal stakeholders, sharing quarterly results, introducing a product, or preparing for a global event, your presentation template sets the tone for how your audience experiences your brand. However, what worked a few years ago may not work in 2025. Design standards, audience expectations, and workplace formats have evolved. Cluttered layouts, outdated color schemes, or inconsistent slide elements can subtly damage your credibility, without you even realizing it. That’s why a thorough presentation template audit is essential for any business that relies on impactful communication.
If your team reuses the same templates across sales presentations, corporate updates, event presentations, or product demos, this guide will help you assess and upgrade them to meet the visual and functional demands of 2025.
1. Start with a Visual Branding Check
Your presentation template should mirror your brand identity. But branding is not just about adding a logo on every slide. During your audit, assess:
- Fonts: Are you using your brand’s typography consistently across title, body, and subheading styles? There are different types of fonts already available, you just need to find the right ones for your brand, and use it consistently in all presentations.
- Colors: Do the color schemes reflect your current brand guidelines? Are they accessible and legible across different devices?
- Imagery style: Are the photos or illustrations consistent with your brand tone, professional, playful, innovative?
- Icons: Are your icons cohesive and aligned with the rest of your brand visuals?
Many companies update their branding every few years. If your template still reflects your 2019 identity, it’s time for a refresh.
2. Review Slide Layout Variety and Relevance
Good templates work well across various scenarios. Ask-
- Do you have enough layout options for charts, timelines, comparison tables, team bios, and quotes?
- Are there duplicate or redundant layouts that no one uses?
- Are your layouts optimized for different presentation formats, like investor pitch decks, internal corporate reports, or sales meetings?
Your goal should be to offer a versatile set of slide designs that balance consistency with flexibility. If your team constantly customizes or deletes layout elements, the template is probably too rigid or outdated.
3. Test for Remote and Hybrid Readability
Post-pandemic, a majority of presentations are viewed remotely, on Zoom calls, mobile devices, or large LED screens at hybrid events. This shift means your template must prioritize clarity from a distance.
During your audit-
- Test slides on a laptop, tablet, and mobile.
- Check font sizes, can key points be read from a distance?
- Avoid low-contrast color combinations or overly detailed graphics.
- Simplify where possible. Whitespace is not empty space, it’s breathing room for your content.
A presentation design agency can help make your template device-responsive and remote-ready.
4. Evaluate Usability and Ease for Non-Designers
Templates are only effective if your team can use them without frustration. A common issue in outdated templates is overdesign, where non-designers struggle to edit or customize slides.
Ask for feedback from frequent users-
- Are slide elements locked or difficult to adjust?
- Are there too many placeholder layers or confusing color codes?
- Are layout instructions clear?
Your template should empower your team, not intimidate them. Adding tooltips, slide notes, or a quick “how-to-use” cover page can significantly improve user experience.
5. Check Content Hierarchy and Visual Flow
In 2025, visual hierarchy is expected. Viewers scan content in seconds. Your template should guide their attention naturally.
During your audit-
- Are headings prominent and informative?
- Is body text legible, well-spaced, and aligned consistently?
- Do key visuals or data points stand out without overpowering the layout?
- Are call-to-action areas (especially in sales presentations) clearly highlighted?
A poorly structured template forces users to “fix” slides manually. That wastes time and causes brand inconsistency.
6. Audit for Accessibility and Inclusion
Designing for everyone is a responsibility in today’s business scenario. Accessible design ensures your presentation works for people with visual or cognitive challenges.
Use this checklist-
- Do you have enough color contrast between text and background?
- Are all icons and images labeled with alt-text or descriptions?
- Is your font size a minimum of 18pt for body text?
- Is the layout clean and logical, even when viewed without color?
Tools like PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker can help you spot and fix issues before they go live.
7. Modernize with New Slide Types and Visuals
Your old template may not include modern slide types like-
- KPI dashboards
- User journey maps
- Product lifecycle infographics
- Social proof or testimonial layouts
- Timeline animations
- Quote overlays for thought leadership
If your current template doesn’t support these, now’s the time to add them.
Final thoughts
In 2025, the goal of a presentation isn’t to influence. Whether you're pitching, selling, inspiring, or educating, your deck should work as hard as you do. Ditch the clutter. Focus on story. Design with intention. Prepare with purpose. And if you're not confident doing it all yourself? A professional presentation design service can help you build audience-ready decks tailored for every goal. Lucky for you, we, at Crappy Presentations, offer professional presentation design services for all your requirements. If you have a presentation that needs our help, Talk to us!
For guides, tips and tricks on creating investor pitch decks, mistakes to avoid while making a pitch deck, hiring a presentation design agency, and more, Explore the Crappy Presentations Blog.
