Interactive Google Slides Presentation: How to Set Up with AhaSlides in 3 Easy Steps

Tired of watching your audience's eyes glaze over during presentations?

Let's face it:

Keeping people engaged is TOUGH. Whether you're presenting in a stuffy conference room or on Zoom, those blank stares are every presenter's nightmare.

Sure, Google Slides works. But basic slides aren't enough anymore. That's where AhaSlides comes in.

AhaSlides lets you transform boring presentations into interactive experiences with live polls, quizzes, and Q&As that actually get people involved.

And you know what? You can set this up in just 3 simple steps. And yes, it's free to try! Let's dive in...

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Creating Interactive Google Slides Presentation in 3 Simple Steps

Let's take a look at the 3 easy steps for creating your interactive Google Slides presentations. We'll talk you through how to import, how to personalise, and how to increase the interactivity of your presentation.

Be sure to click on the images and GIFs for a zoomed-in version.

Step 1: Get the AhaSlides add-on

Because it's the easiest, no-sweat way to make a Google Slides presentation interactive...

1. On your Google Slides presentation, click on 'Extensions' - 'Add-ons' - 'Get Add-ons'
2. Search for AhaSlides, and click 'Install' (here's the link to jump straight to the extension)
3. You can see the AhaSlides add-on in the 'Extension' section

Click the button below if you haven't got a free AhaSlides account👇

Step 2: Personalising the Interactive Slides

Go to 'Extensions' and select 'AhaSlides for Google Slides' - Open Sidebar to open the AhaSlides add-on sidebar. From now on, you can create dialogue via quizzes, polls and Q&As around the subject matter of your presentation.

There are a few ways to maximise the impact of an interactive Google Slides presentation. Check them out below:

Option 1: Make a Quiz

Quizzes are a fantastic way to test your audience's understanding of the subject matter. Putting one at the end of your presentation can really help to consolidate new knowledge in a fun and memorable way.

1. From the sidebar, select a type of quiz slide.

2. Fill out the content of the slide. You can use the 'Generate options' button to create quiz answers faster, customise points, and time limit.

3. Fill out the content of the slide. This will be the question title, the options and right answer, the time to answer and the points system for answering.

To add another quiz question, simply click on another quiz type to prompt a new slide.

A leaderboard slide will appear when a new quiz slide is added; you can delete them and only keep the final slide to reveal the final score at the end.

Option 2: Make a Poll

A poll in the middle of your interactive Google Slides presentation works wonders for creating a dialogue with your audience. It also helps to illustrate your point in a setting that directly involves your audience, leading to more engagement.

First, we'll show you how to create a poll:

1. Select the question type. A multiple-choice slide works well for a poll, as does an open-ended slide or a word cloud.

2. Pose your question, add the options and choose how the poll will be displayed (bar chart, donut chart or pie chart). A poll question can have correct answers but won't calculate scores like quizzes.

Option 3: Make a Q&A

A great feature of any interactive Google Slides presentation is the live Q&A. This function allows your audience to pose questions and even answer ones that you've posed to them at anytime during your presentation. Here's how it works:

1. Choose the Q&A slide type on the sidebar.

2. Choose whether or not to moderate the participants' questions, whether to allow the audience to see each other's questions and whether to allow anonymous questions.

With the Q&A enabled across your presentation, participants can ask questions whenever they think of them—no need to wait for a dedicated Q&A slide.

Using the presentation code, your audience can pose you questions throughout your presentation. You can come back to these questions at any time, whether it's in the middle of your presentation or after it.

Here are a few features of the Q&A function on AhaSlides:

• Sort questions into categories in order to keep them organised. You can pin important questions to come back to later or you can mark questions as answered to keep track of what you've responded to.
• Upvoting questions allows other audience members to make the presenter aware that they would also like another person's question answered.
• Asking at any time means that the flow of the interactive presentation is never interrupted by questions. Only the presenter is in control of where and when to answer questions.

If you're after more tips on how to utilise Q&A for the ultimate interactive Google Slides presentation, check out our tutorial here.

Step 3: Invite Your Participants to Join

Finish creating interactive slides? Simply click 'Present with AhaSlides' (make sure to allow pop-ups in your browser) to allow AhaSlides sessions. Your participants can join these activities in two ways:

1. Go to ahaslides.com and enter the join code
2. Scan the QR code that appeared on the presenter's screen

The Golden Benefits of Integrating AhaSlides with Google Slides

If you're in any doubt about why you would want to embed a Google Slides presentation into AhaSlides, let us give you 4 reasons.

1. More Ways to Interact

While Google Slides has a nice Q&A feature, it lacks a lot of other features that foster interaction between the presenter and the audience.

If a presenter wants to gather information via a poll, for example, they would have to poll their audience before the presentation began. Then, they would have to quickly arrange that information into a self-made bar chart, all while their audience sits silently on Zoom. Far from ideal, for sure.

Well, AhaSlides lets you do this on the fly.

Simply pose a question on a multiple choice slide and wait for your audience to answer. Their results appear attractively and instantaneously in a bar, donut or pie chart for all to see.

You can also use a word cloud slide to gather opinions about a certain topic either before, during or after you present it. The most common words will appear larger and more centrally, giving you and your audience a good idea of everyone's viewpoints.

2. Higher Engagement

One of the key ways that higher interaction benefits your presentation is in the rate of engagement.

Put simply, your audience pays much more attention when they're directly involved in the presentation. When they can voice their own opinions, ask their own questions and see their own data manifested in charts, they connect with your presentation on a more personal level.

Including audience data in your presentation is also a sublime way to help frame facts and figures in a more meaningful way. It helps the audience to see the bigger picture and gives them something to relate to.

3. More Fun and Memorable Presentations

Fun plays a pivotal role in learning. We've known this for years, but it's not so easy to implement fun into lessons and presentations.

One study found that fun in the workplace is conducive to better and more daring ideas. Countless others have found a distinctive positive link between fun lessons and students' ability to remember facts within them.

AhaSlides' quiz function is so perfect for this. It's a simple tool that fosters fun and encourages competition within an audience, not to mention raising the engagement levels and providing an avenue for creativity.

Find out how to make the perfect quiz on AhaSlides with this tutorial.

4. More Design Features

There are many ways that users of Google Slides can benefit from AhaSlides' premium features. The main one is that it's possible to personalise your colour on AhaSlides before integrating your presentation with Google Slides.

The great depth of font, image, colour and layout options on can help bring any presentation to life. These features let you build your presentation in a style that connects your audience with your topic.

Want to Add a New Dimension to Your Google Slides?

Then try out AhaSlides for free.

Our free plan gives you full access to our interactive features, including the ability to import Google Slides presentations. Make them interactive with any of the methods we've discussed here, and start enjoying a more positive response to your presentations.