Why a longish headline is better than a short title on top of slides
In this post, I will share why it is better to have a longsh (upto 2 lines) message on the top of your slides, rather than a short title.
Here’s a small exercise for you. What is the right headline for the two charts?
Is it:
- India: Literacy rate analysis
- Literacy rate in India over time and compared to other countries
- How has India fared in literacy rate?
- The journey of India’s literacy rate
Some of you might be leaning towards option (b), while some may think that (d) sounds better.
The answer: None of the above
None of them answer the question for the audience: what meaning do the two charts convey? Each of them leaves unanswered questions in the audience’s mind:
| Header | Audience’s response |
| India: Literacy rate analysis | Yes, what about the analysis? What came of it? |
| Literacy rate in India over time and compared to other countries | So, how are we doing over time? Are we up or down? And compared to other countries? Better or worse? |
| How has India fared in literacy rate? | Yeah, how has it? You tell me! |
| The journey of India’s literacy rate | Journeys can be good or bad. How was India’s? |
The headers above are what we call bland ‘titles’. They convey the topic being discussed, but don’t explain the meaning of the slide. Instead of titles like these, consider this sentence: ‘India’s literacy has grown steadily; but is still below world average and other developing countries.’ This sentence is what we call as a ‘message’—a clear one-line summary of the information in the slide. Every slide should have a clear message on the top-left corner (in place of the header) as shown in Figure 2.
If you are thinking, ‘but isn’t that sentence too long? I thought one should have a short and crisp header’, good question.
Let’s consider a real-life slide with some data on the travel sector. Here’s what I would request you to do. Open a stopwatch on your phone, start the timer, and then observe the slide in Figure 5. Try to formulate a one-sentence summary of the meaning of the slide in your mind.
Even though it is a relatively simple slide, it would have taken you some time to understand it. At first, you’d have seen that the table compares the share of the two main sources people use to do online travel planning – search engines and brand sites/apps – across four travel categories (car rental, air travel, accommodations and cruises). Then you realise that the years have been put in the wrong order (most readers would prefer to see 2013 before 2014). And eventually, you work out that, in all categories, search engines are gaining share over brand sites/apps. That is your ‘message’.
Check your stopwatch. When I do this exercise in a workshop, people typically take between two to two-and-a-half minutes (or 120-150 seconds) to figure out the message on their own. That is a lot of time for just one slide – time that your audience should not be spending for such a simple finding[1]. Instead, you should have the message clearly displayed at the top like this slide in Figure 6.
Read the message on this slide and look at the contents now.
When I do this exercise in my workshops, participants say that they ‘get’ the meaning of this slide in just 10-20 seconds now (as against the 120-150 seconds earlier). That is a drastic reduction in the time and effort for the audience to understand your data story.
Write a clear message on the top of every slide.
The final hurdle – your mindset
Since 2016, I’ve conducted storytelling workshops for 9,000+ participants at leading companies across sectors. In these sessions, whenever I’ve demonstrated the power of messages over titles, the response is similar. People are initially enthusiastic and buy into the concept. But soon enough, one person will pipe up: “But Ravi, we have always just had a title at the top”.
The unsaid part: “This is too big of a change for us. We might prove that it works in a workshop. But don’t count on us doing this on an ongoing basis.”
I get it. It’s a big (little) change. If you are uncertain about adopting it wholesale, here’s what you could do:
- Try it out on just one or two critical slides in your next presentation.
- If you aren’t sure of the audience’s reaction, keep a bland-title version of your slide, show that first and then show the same slide with a clear message on top. Ask your audience what would they prefer.
- Even if that person says they prefer the bland header, don’t lose hope. Try it out on a different audience or with a different type of slide. You’ll slowly but surely get better at the task and will find a supportive audience.
Don’t present slides with just bland titles on top. Craft a crisp message so both you and your audience are clear about the slide’s point.
[1] You might be thinking, ‘But I’ll be there to talk through the slide. Yes, but sometimes you have to send the slides as a pre-read or a post-read. Your voice won’t be there to explain it then. And even while presenting, it is useful to have a clear message on top for those who aren’t paying attention to your entire voiceover (there would be many!).
