How Many Slides Should I use for a 5 Minute Presentation?

If you’re trying to create a short and sweet presentation, then it’s a good idea to ensure that it’s the right amount of slides. If you put too few slides into your presentation, then you won’t be able to get your point across. But if you put too many, then you’re not going to have time to present them all clearly.

This is why it’s important to get the right amount of slides in there. Doing this can help you to create a coherent and clear presentation without it being overwhelming for the viewers.

But just how many slides should you put into your presentation if you’ve only got a five minute time frame? Well, we’re going to give you the correct amount to do this.

How Many Slides Should I use for a 5 Minute Presentation?

If you’re going to give a five minute presentation, then you don’t want to be using more than 6 slides. This is the perfect amount to give a brief but comprehensive presentation of your chosen topic. Any more than this and you probably won’t get enough time to cover all of them slides in your presentation.

As well as the length of your presentation, you should also consider the structure of it too. Here’s how you can easily organize your presentation to make sure that you cover everything that you need to.

Slide 1 – Introduction

Time Spent: 30 Seconds. At the start of your short presentation, it’s always a good idea to have a short slides that introduces your topic and what you’re going to be talking about. You don’t want to spend a lot of time on this slide, and you should get through it as quickly as you can.

Slides 2 to 4 – Content

Time Spent: 4 minutes. You should try and fit the bulk of your content into 3 slides in the middle of your presentation. Whilst the 2nd slide should be there to help set the scene and explain the issue you’re trying to solve, the 4th slide will then sum up how you went about solving the problem, and what your findings were.

If necessary, you can add an extra slide into the middle of this. But in most cases, spending a minute or more on each slide is going to be a good idea, as it will allow you to present comprehensively to your audience.

Slide 5 – Summary

Time Spent: 30 Seconds. As the end of your presentation, it’s best practice for you to have a summary slide of what you’ve just gone through. This should recap each slide briefly, and if you want to, can even include a call for questions from the audience. It’s a good way to end your presentation, as it will give your audience the key points you want them to take away.

Additional Tips

As well as using this time structure for your presentation, there are also some additional tips that you can use to make things a little easier for yourself too.

• Make your point – You literally only have 5 minutes of time here, so you need to get your point across clearly both in your introduction and in your summary too. Don’t let people walk away wondering what your presentation was even supposed to mean.
• Write a script – If you need to, it can also be a good idea for you to write a script to go along with your presentation. There’s nothing worse than a presentation with you just reading the words on the slides, so an additional script with extra information is a good idea.
• Slow down – Even though you’ve only got a few minutes, it’s important to speak in a slow and clear manner. A clear 4 slide presentation is better than a rushed 10 slide presentation.
• Use a clicker – If you don’t want to set up your presentation to work on a time, then getting a good presentation clicker can help you to time your presentation, and flick to the next slide without running back to your laptop.

Conclusion

This is just a rough guide for how many slides you should fit into your presentation. If course, you could add one slides in or take one out depending on the style of your presentation. But fitting 9 or 10 slides into a 5 minute presentation is generally going to be a bad idea, and it isn’t a particularly good idea.