When it comes to preparing a PowerPoint presentation it's tough to find a balance between being too simple or too fancy. We want to keep our audience engaged, but we don't want transitions and animations to distract from what's most important: the presentation. We surveyed the Front60 design team and came up with the following tips for creating the perfect PowerPoint presentation.

• Use logical flow: this may seem obvious, but it's often overlooked; order your slides so they tell a story and make an argument.

• Keep it simple: use graphics and media that convey the message. Clutter confuses, when in doubt take it out.

You've got a name, logo, business cards and a letterhead, but do you have a brand? A brand in its simplest form is a noun, a thing. It's not simply the name of your company, or a way for people to identify you against another; although it serves those purposes. A brand should make you feel something, make you aspire to be like them, identify with and trust them.

Brands have characteristics the same way people do; most, if not all major brands have brand strategy guides that are meant to be followed closely across all communications. This includes everything from the layout of a banner ad, to the social media, to the way customer service representatives conduct themselves.

A May 2010 report by Forrester Research offers some interesting insights about online shopping behaviour, and particularly, why so many people abandon their online shopping carts before making a purchase.

The report entitled Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment found that nearly 88% of web buyers have abandoned shopping carts at some point. If online retailers can convert only a small percentage of these lost sales, the effect on their bottom line could prove significant.