According to research, messages delivered as stories are up to 22 times more memorable than just facts, and this principle applies as powerfully to web design as it does to boardroom presentations.
The Hook: First Impressions That Stop the Scroll
Your homepage is often the first – and possibly the only – chance to captivate and engage a user. Just as a pitch deck opens with a compelling hook to grab investor attention, your homepage needs to immediately communicate value without overwhelming visitors.
The best presentations don't begin with company credentials or lengthy backstories. They start with a problem that makes the audience lean forward. The organization behind the popular live storytelling series The Moth suggests that storytellers "start in the action" – advice that translates perfectly to web design.
Consider how your homepage currently introduces your brand. Does it immediately address why someone should care, or does it start with generic corporate speak? The most effective websites, like compelling presentations, waste no time establishing relevance to their audience's needs.
Visual Hierarchy: Guiding the Eye Through Your Story
Visual hierarchy is a key design principle that organizes elements in a presentation to guide the audience's attention to what is most important. This principle transfers directly to web design, where every element should work together to tell a cohesive story.
Professional presentations use contrast, typography, and spacing to control how information is consumed. Setting the right colour palette is essential, as it gives everything a consistent feel and can give you the ability to assign meaning to specific colours to help your audience understand things. Your website should employ these same techniques, using design elements not just for aesthetics, but as storytelling tools that guide visitors through your narrative.
The Three-Act Structure: Beginning, Middle, and Call to Action
Websites can use this concept to guide users through a structured journey. Your homepage acts as the introduction, where you lay the foundation of your brand's message. The core pages are the "middle," where users gather detailed information, and the "end" is your call to action.
This mirrors the classic presentation flow: establish context, build the case, then request action. Each page of your website should advance the story whilst maintaining momentum towards conversion.
The most successful pitch decks don't just present information – they create a logical progression that makes the conclusion feel inevitable. Your pitch deck should take the audience on a journey. You do that by telling a compelling story. Your website should function similarly, with each click revealing new information that builds upon what came before.
Know Your Audience: The Foundation of Effective Communication
If you want your audience to care, you have to understand them. This fundamental truth applies equally to presentations and websites. Both mediums succeed when they speak directly to their intended audience's specific needs, concerns, and aspirations.
Before telling your story, make sure you're familiar with your audience. Know their preferences, interests, and level of expertise in the subject matter. This understanding should inform everything from your content tone to your design choices.
Where Presentations and Websites Diverge
Whilst presentations and websites share storytelling DNA, they differ in crucial ways. Presentations are typically linear experiences with a presenter controlling the pace and emphasis. Websites, however, must accommodate non-linear exploration whilst maintaining narrative coherence.
While users don't always enter a website from the homepage, many return to it as a safe harbour when getting lost on a site. This means your website story must be robust enough to work when experienced out of sequence, yet compelling enough to encourage the full journey.
Simplicity: The Ultimate Sophistication
From the visitors' point of view, the best site design is a pure text, without any advertisements or further content blocks matching exactly the query visitors used or the content they've been looking for. This echoes the presentation principle of clarity over complexity.
Both mediums benefit from ruthless editing. If an element can be removed from a slide without diminishing the message, remove it or change it. The same applies to web design – every element should either advance your story or be eliminated.
Making It Personal: The Customer as Hero
Make your customer the hero and your brand the helpful guide. Your job isn't to show how great you are, it's to show how your product or service helps your customer win. This storytelling approach works brilliantly in both presentations and web design.
Rather than positioning your company as the star of the story, effective websites and presentations frame the customer's journey as the central narrative, with your solution playing the crucial supporting role that enables their success.
The Call to Action: Every Story Needs a Resolution
Without conflict, there is no story. The protagonist should face obstacles and challenges that they must overcome in order to achieve their goal. This conflict creates tension and keeps the audience engaged. Your website should acknowledge the challenges your visitors face, then provide a clear path to resolution.
The strongest presentations end with a specific, actionable request. Similarly, your website should guide visitors towards a meaningful next step, whether that's scheduling a consultation, downloading a resource, or making a purchase.
Transform Your Digital Presence
Understanding these parallels can revolutionise how you approach your website. Instead of thinking about pages and navigation, consider chapters and character development. Rather than focusing solely on features and benefits, craft a narrative that makes your visitors the heroes of their own success stories.
Your website isn't just a digital brochure – it's an opportunity to tell a story so compelling that visitors become customers, and customers become advocates. By applying these presentation principles to your web design, you'll create an experience that doesn't just inform, but genuinely engages and converts.