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8 Things to Pay Attention to When Purchasing a Professional Presentation Template

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Best PowerPoint Template - Influencer Presentation Template

Imagine you have a major business meeting to attend. Assuming you’re not a professional tailor, you probably wouldn’t show up wearing a suit you tried sewing yourself, right? That would be a disaster! But you would happily stop by a department store or a tailor and buy a quality suit – some things are best left to the experts. The same is true with business suits as it is with business PowerPoint templates. If you spend a lot of time giving presentations, purchasing a professional PowerPoint template can be a really smart move because it will save you tons of time and give your presentation a polished, qualified look.

We think that having a modern PowerPoint template to show off to your audience is so important that we recently launched our own professional template on Graphic River. However, not all professional PowerPoint templates are created equal. In fact, some are much better than others *ahem*. In this article you are going to learn about eight important things to consider when purchasing a presentation template.

Buyer Tip #1 – Look for Consistency

Consistency is something we talk about quite frequently here at Presentation Panda. A professional PowerPoint template should have the same design, font, and color scheme consistency throughout. Make sure that when you are browsing through sample templates there don’t seem to be any sort of discrepancies. Do some slides have one style of design and others another one that’s completely different? Are there color mismatches or is header font being used disastrously in the display text? These are the sort of characteristics of an inconsistent presentation template that you need to be on the lookout against. You want to choose a cool PowerPoint template for your presentation, not something that will make you wonder why you spent the money and time on an inadequate product.

Buyer Tip #2 – The Number of Slides Offered Does Not Always Equal Value

Some designers who sell templates boast astronomical numbers of how many slides you are about to receive; after all, the more slides you’re getting for your money, the better the deal. Right?
Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Keep in mind that these numbers might sneakily count variations of the same slide, rather than original slides. For example, a trick some designers play is that they say they have X number of unique slides, but they might be counting the fact that they changed the color palette from one slide to another and have decided to call that a new slide. That is why it is so important for you to pay attention to the number of UNIQUE slides. This means you also have to take the time to look through the slides in a template and judge for yourself if the content matches the description.

While there is no magic number, a good ballpark amount for a respectable, modern PowerPoint template with good variety is a range between 40 and 200. Even then you need to be careful because some designers may make one small tweak such as adding an icon or changing the font and count it as a unique slide (of course, in doing so they might risk compromising the visual consistency of the entire slide template, which goes back to the tip we just discussed above) . The point is that you need to take a look through the slides to make sure there are lots of unique looking slides throughout the template. Obviously you’re not going to use each slide (at least, we hope not) in a single presentation but a good template should include every kind of slide you need.

Buyer Tip #3 – Make Sure the Template is Organized

When you are shopping around for a business PowerPoint template, it should look well organized – this almost goes without saying. Ideally, it should come organized into various sections rather than have every slide clumped together seemingly at random. An organized template means it will be easier for you to search for specific slides you want to use in your presentations, rather than fishing around for them and wasting lots of time in the process. The template you decide to purchase should have neatly organized sections where you can find “About Us” slides, “Our Team” slides, “Services” slides,  “Customer Analysis” slides, etc. all nestled up to each other, so you have a clear idea of what slides are at your disposal.

Here is an example of how we organized some of the slides within the Influencer Template …

Cool PowerPoint Template - Professional PowerPoint Template - Influencer Template

Buyer Tip #4 – Pay Attention to the Details

How embarrassing would it be to be in the middle of giving a presentation and then see that your slide template which you paid $50 for has uneven margins? You would hope that no one else would notice, but it could be the sort of thing that makes your presentation look distinctly amateur hour.

So, when you go shopping for templates, inspect the slides to make sure you do not catch any little details that are off. Do you see any spelling or grammar mistakes? Does the alignment look off? Is there line spillover or unnecessary spacing

Like this?

These types of subtle errors may suggest that there could be other issues with the template, not to mention they give off a distinctly unprofessional vibe. Your presentation is meant to impress potential new clients, not scare them away. So pay attention to those small details and make sure that the template you select complements what will no doubt be a brilliant and engaging presentation.

Buyer Tip #5 – Make Sure a Help Guide Is Provided

No matter how straightforward it might seem, even the best designed, most modern PowerPoint template is going to have issues that you can’t figure out on your own. All templates require some type of customization by you after you have purchased them, which means you have to roll up your sleeves, get dirty, and possibly spend thirty minutes banging your head against a wall because you can’t seem to figure out how to alter the color swatch for the bullet points on your slide. Here is a partial list of some of the tasks you might find yourself saddled with when you customize your template:

  • You may need to change the text
  • You may need to insert additional text
  • You may need to swap the images
  • You may want to add your logo
  • You may need to change a color
  • You may need to add a new icon

That is why when you go to purchase a template, you need to make sure the designer has created some type of help guide to show you how to do the above things. Otherwise you will have to either rely on the designer to personally get back to you with what will turn out to be simple solutions to your problems (which wastes your time), or hire someone to help you (which just costs you more money).

Customizing a template may be easy for some, but not everyone is as capable (nor are all templates intuitively designed). Make sure you see that extra help (guides, video, etc.) is provided with the template. The best option is to have a good help guide available to you so that you can quickly and effectively make all the changes you need to for your presentation.

Buyer Tip #6 – Find a Presentation Template Style That Fits Your Brand

Depending on your audience and the subject matter, there are lots of different types of templates to choose from, some more suitable than others. Make sure to go with a template that fits your company and brand. If you have a huge presentation pitch coming up, you probably need something a little more corporate looking — think dark, grayscale palette and simple flat-design icons. Or perhaps you may want something that is a little more light hearted and playful, like if you are presenting a new teaching app or are speaking at a conference of children’s candy confectioners. Think about your business and your brand and what you are trying to represent – then choose a theme accordingly.

On the other side of things, if you are modern tech startup you may not want to go with a “retro” themed template, even though that might be something that looks cool to you. There is always a little room to push the envelop in terms of style, but we’re talking about PowerPoint presentation templates, not the Paris Fashion Week. You don’t have to be too conservative with what style you choose, but generally it’s good to find a template that has some universal appeal. If you’re in doubt, use your common sense or ask someone who knows a thing or two about design (like us) to help you make a good choice.

Buyer Tip #7 – How Does the Presentation Template Make You Feel?

Sort of like love at first sight, when you make your choice for PowerPoint presentation template, the One you choose should have an immediate, resonating connection with you. The blood should rush to your cheeks, your pupils should dilate and light should flood your sight, your heart should be throbbing violently in your chest.

Well, maybe that’s actually what love feels like, and even the most exciting presentation template can’t top love. But if you do see a particular theme that catches your interest, it probably is worth checking out. Chances are, if you have a strong positive reaction towards a template then your audience will too, and that will only make your presentation more memorable.

Buyer Tip #8 – Check the Comments Thread

Everybody appreciates good customer service, which is why you should check the comments thread and any other forums where customers can sound off about what they like or dislike about a given PowerPoint template. Ideally, you will see a lot of positive comments from satisfied customers, not too many complaints or major technical issues. Before making your purchase, make sure that that the designer is responsive to user questions and comments. If a customer has expressed concern with a specific issue, such as adding text to an infographic slide, the designer’s response should provide an easy to follow and straightforward solution to this problem.

One other super important consideration is that you make sure that the designer responds to comments in a timely fashion. If a customer has an urgent issue that they report on a Monday and they have an upcoming presentation on a Wednesday, it would be pretty upsetting to see that the designer doesn’t respond until Friday. So if you’re considering a PowerPoint presentation template that seems to have a lot of issues that aren’t resolved within a reasonable time frame, you might want to think about going with a different designer.

Bonus Tip! – Do You Have Adobe Photoshop?

Some presentation templates may include cool looking slides that have been created with Photoshop. However, if you plan on EDITING these type of slides keep in mind that you will need Adobe Photoshop to do so.

Below is a template slide example of what I am talking about.

PowerPoint Template Using Adobe Photoshop

While the above Eureka Template slide does look pretty cool you won’t be able to edit this slide unless you have Photoshop.

Conclusion

Hopefully you have many positive takeaways here to help you on your next PowerPoint presentation template purchase. It’s worth noting that a lot of design groups, including ours, are happy to hear feedback from potential customers about what they do or don’t like about a particular product. For example, if there’s a template that you really like for the style and animations but it’s missing editable infographics, let the agency know that you are interested in seeing those features added to the template. It is entirely feasible that if you put in a good word, an agency will be happy to add on a few extra bits of content for you if it means making the sale. We appreciate your feedback!

Speaking of which, let us know what sort of features you like to see in PowerPoint presentation templates. Is there any particular style that works best for you? And in case you haven’t seen it yet, we just released our very own custom-designed business PowerPoint presentation template on Graphic River – check it out!

Lastly, do you have a friend that could benefit from learning about these presentation design tips? If so, email them the link to this post.

Thanks for sharing and be sure to post this article on Twitter of Facebook as well (by using the sharing buttons to the left).

Want to know more about our Influencer PowerPoint Template? Here is an in-depth review of its features.

Quality PowerPoint Template - Professional Presentation Template - Influencer Template

Presentation tips - Check out my ebook Slides Made Slimple Now!


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