Why is PowerPoint Still the Most Popular Presentation Design App?
Powerpoint is the most popular and widely used presentation design application among corporate companies and educational institutions. It is a versatile tool that allows you to create professional-looking slide decks, with free images and icons, charts, and graphs to build, along with animation and transitions. PowerPoint’s popularity continues to grow with over 30 million presentations made every day around the globe!
PowerPoint is considered the best app for making presentations despite the many new applications that have been introduced into the market recently. Here are a few key reasons why it is the chosen application for most professionals:
1. Familiar Interface
PowerPoint has a familiar interface if you already know how to use Microsoft Word or Excel, which makes it easy to create and customize presentations quickly and efficiently. The menu, tabs, buttons and icons are very similar across these applications.
2. Compatibility
PowerPoint is compatible with a variety of devices, including PCs, Macs, and mobile devices, making it accessible to users across different platforms, including online application versions.
3. Microsoft Office Apps Integration
PowerPoint integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft Office apps like Excel and Word, making it easy to import data and content from these apps into your presentations. Not to mention you can also upload this to your drive and open it on the online version of Microsoft and even on Google Slides if you are using Gmail.
4. Versatile Features
PowerPoint has a wide range of features that allow you to create different types of presentations, from basic to advanced, depending on your needs and skill level. As an advanced presentation design professional and powerpoint expert, I can also import specific files created from other software into PowerPoint, while designing a stylized attractive presentation.
5. Design Options
PowerPoint offers a variety of design options, including themes, templates, and design layout suggestions, allowing you to create visually appealing and engaging presentations. You can also build comprehensive templates or fully customized and branded presentations.
6. Security
Microsoft Office apps are secure and encrypted software programs that have been the gold standard for corporate for over 30 years. Which means, if you share sensitive financial information within the program on the desktop or online version, it is safe. You are not uploading it to a server or network where others could possibly access it if they worked for the company on the back in, which is the case of many new presentation applications which are SaaS programs.
Overall, PowerPoint is an excellent app for creating presentations, whether you're a beginner or an experienced presenter with nifty design skills. Its features, familiar interface, and compatibility makes PowerPoint a popular choice for students, professional individuals and corporate organizations.
There are many alternatives to presentation design including, Google Slides, Keynote, Prezi, Beautiful.ai, Canva, Visme, Pitch, and Slidebean, just to name the most popular ones. Some of which are free while others are paid subscriptions. You should consider how many licenses you need and whether you need the files to be transferrable within the company or outside the company.
A recommended alternative to PowerPoint is Google Slides which is part of the Google Workspace, formally known as G Suites programs if you have Gmail or Business Gmail. Teams can collaborate online and the platform can also read PowerPoint files if you open it online. It's not exactly seamless, just be sure to check all your slides to see if anything shifted and if all the graphics appear correctly. From my own experience, the gradient doesn't always appear on Google Slides as it does in PowerPoint.
As a professional Graphic Designer who specializes in presentation design for over 15 years, my clients have have mostly requested PowerPoint presentations, while a handful of times I had to convert it to Google Slides, which is simply uploading it into my Gmail account and opening it through Google Workspace (G Suite). I can certainly work in Keynote and learn new applications, but I have not been requested to do so from any of my clients.
