A webinar is a new coinage in the English language to define a particular kind of web conferencing, and it is based on the word “seminar”. Like a traditional seminar, where one speaker or several speakers address an audience, in the webinar too a speaker or presenter talks to an audience through webinar features.

During the early days of the Internet, the term “web conferencing” meant a group discussion on a message board which was not a live presentation, but through the years, the term has evolved to mean a live or synchronous meeting. Some key webinar features are the interactive elements — the ability to give, receive and discuss information in real time, which makes it different from a webcast, where the information flow is one-way and does not permit any interaction between presenter and audience.

Webinar Features Designed with a Purpose

Organizations use the best webinar software to bring training and development programs to their employees, and also for business meetings, involving people in several different locations. Webinar software can even be used to drive PR and marketing campaigns to promote the products or services of a particular company to prospective customers.

Incorporate Audio and Visual Components

Today’s webinar features real-time synchronous audio and video to provide a completely web-based face-to-face meeting. The best webinar providers have even adapted to today’s technology, and are offering their software with High Definition capabilities. This allows for much more vibrant meetings with higher levels of interaction. With today’s powerful webinar features, companies don’t ever need to miss a beat, and can be more productive than ever before.

Webinar Slide Shows

During the webinar session, the main speaker may use PowerPoint or Keynote slides to give a visual presentation to the audience. Webinar providers offer the markup tools needed to make the slide presentation highly interactive and visually stimulating.

Go on Web Tours with Webinar Features

These webinar features, which engages and involve the remote audience, take participants on a virtual tour of websites with the data, cookies, scripts and other elements available to them at the click of a mouse. Webinar features like this work well when a website demonstration is necessary, and users can be involved in the exercise.

You Can Even Use a Whiteboard!

A whiteboard is seen on the screen by all participants of the webinar. This feature of webinar software allows the speaker and other participants to make annotations in real time, such as to highlight or mark items. The whiteboard feature of webinar software may also be used to make notes during the proceedings.

Use Your Webinar Features to Text Chat During a Webinar

This is  interesting among webinar features since it helps all the people attending the webinar feel part of the proceedings. This could be a live question and answer session, where everyone is free to ask the presenter about any aspect of the webinar. The text chat webinar features may by public and open to all the participants or private, which allows for one-on-one “breakaway” sessions between two participants.

Conducting Polls and Surveys

Webinar features enable you to add another interactive element to your webinar software. During and after the webinar, you can freely survey and poll your participants to get the audiences opinion on certain issues.  These polls and surveys are easy to use and feature a multiple choice options to keep it all simple.

Desktop Sharing

These webinar features enable all the participants to view anything that the speaker is showing on his/her screen. Some webinar services even permit remote desktop control, where the audience can manipulate the speaker’s screen, but this is a feature rarely used by audience members, and primarily used if there are multiple presenters.