Very important experiences here. My favourite tip when writing slides is:

Headlines Not Headings

Headings describe what the slide is about. Headlines state what the slide means. When every slide has a takeaway in the title, your deck becomes self-explanatory and your audience can follow the story without doing extra work.

For example:

• “Market overview” → “Growth is slowing, but our segment continues to expand.”

• “Customer insights” → “Customers want fewer failures, not more features.”

• “Performance” → “We hit volume, but margin dropped due to discounting.”