10 Stunning Interactive Timeline Examples to Make Your Own (2024)

A timeline is a visual representation of a period of time. This could showcase anything from the biography of a historical figure or an era in time to the start and finish of a project or a company’s history.

Timelines are useful tools for a number of reasons. But sometimes they need to carry so much information that it can make the visual or overall design too dense. This is where an interactive timeline comes into play.

Interactive timelines make learning the information or understanding the overall timeline easier and more engaging. Plus, they can hold even more information than a static timeline.

Throughout this article, we’ll talk more about what an interactive timeline entails, what you should include in yours plus 10 interactive timeline examples and templates you can customize to create your own.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

• What Is an Interactive Timeline?
• What to Include in an Interactive Timeline
• 10 Stunning Interactive Timeline Examples + Templates
• 5 Ways to Use an Interactive Timeline

What Is an Interactive Timeline?

An interactive timeline is a visual timeline design that the end user can interact with to see more information and learn more about what the timeline is depicting.
An interactive timeline can include interactive elements like:

• Embedded videos
• Clickable elements that lead to relevant websites
• Clickable elements that pop up more information within the design
• Hoverable elements that make additional information appear
• Animated icons and illustrations that draw attention to important elements
• A multi-page timeline that viewers can click from slide to slide to view

There are a number of ways to make your timeline design interactive so that it engages viewers and holds even more information—and many of those can be done right inside Visme.

What to Include in an Interactive Timeline

If you’re interested in creating your own interactive timeline, let’s walk through a few must-haves. Some are similar to a regular timeline and others will be exclusive to interactive designs.

Header

Any timeline’s visual representation should always have a header with the title of the timeline. This might also include some type of visual that sets the scene and lets your reader know what type of information they’ll be discovering in your timeline.

Here’s an example of a timeline header:

If you’re creating a multi-page or multi-slide timeline, your header will be your first slide or page, introducing your topic with little to no other information required.

Timeline Bar

The timeline bar is the most important element of your timeline. It’s what makes your timeline a timeline. You might choose to create a horizontal timeline bar, vertical timeline bar, a zigzag timeline bar or a timeline bar that spans multiple slides. It’s entirely up to you (and we’ll introduce you to several concepts in just a bit).

Here’s an example of a vertical timeline bar depicting the order of various sessions in a project:

Descriptions

The next major element of an interactive timeline is a title and description for each piece of your timeline. This provides more context for each piece of the timeline, whether it’s sharing steps that a reader needs to take or pertinent historical information.

Here’s an example of what that might look like in your timeline:

Accompanying Visuals

Visuals help to further drive your point home. Visme offers visual elements like stock photos, icons, illustrations, shapes and more that can help you create a narrative that is easy to understand.

This example uses icons to visualize each step of this project timeline template:

Pop-up Effects

You’ll also want to incorporate some type of pop-up effect. But this is applicable only to interactive timelines. If using Visme to create your interactive timeline, you can choose between clickable or hoverable pop-ups.

This way, you can hide large chunks of text or other information until your reader manually clicks on or hovers over the button, helping to create more real estate out of a smaller design and ensure your timeline isn’t overly cluttered.

10 Stunning Interactive Timeline Examples + Templates

You can easily create your own interactive timeline from scratch using a graphic design software (like Visme), but we’re going to make it even easier for you.

We’ve created 8 stunning interactive timeline examples that you can use for inspiration or customize as a starting point for your own interactive timeline design.

1. Interactive Horizontal Timeline

A horizontal timeline is perfect for a more concise timeline, like a quick one-off project. If you know you won’t have to continue adding pieces to your timeline, you can take advantage of a template like the one above.

Place each of your deliverable deadlines along the timeline bar. With an interactive timeline, all you need to do is input the title of the deliverable and the date it’s due.

You can then use a pop-up (that’s visible either by clicking on or hovering over the deliverable title) to input additional information, like:

• Who the stakeholder(s) of that deliverable is
• What the specifics surrounding the deliverable are, and even
• A link to the project board or asset files needed to complete the deliverable

All of that can be done right inside Visme, then saved and shared with your team to make project management as easy as possible.

2. Interactive Vertical Timeline

As opposed to a horizontal timeline, a vertical timeline is ideal for longer or more fluid timelines. This is because (especially in infographic-mode in Visme) it’s much easier to change the length of your timeline than the width.

In this instance, you’ll want to leave off any potential footer design to make sure it’s as easy as possible to expand on your existing timeline. You can simply drag your canvas and timeline bar down to provide even more space for deliverables.

3. Interactive Roadmap Timeline

A roadmap is a visual representation of a plan, helping to guide your team through each piece of the puzzle until you finally get to the last step: launch.

By creating an interactive roadmap, you can add even more details and information for each phase of the plan, providing even more context for your team. You can even add links to your project management software or utilize Visme integrations for more project updates.

Create branches in your roadmap that depict potential disruptions or different ways your project stakeholders can take things in case one task takes longer than expected.

4. Interactive Biographical Timeline

A biographical timeline goes back in time through a person’s life or accomplishments. For example, going back through Martin Luther King, Jr.’s biography like we see above, or outlining the life and times of Thomas Jefferson.

With an interactive biographical timeline, you can add much more information about a person’s life than you normally could. You can simply input dates and title information, then add a button for viewers to click to learn more about what happened during that time.

5. Interactive Historical Timeline

A historical timeline is similar to the biographical timeline above in that it goes back in time to provide chronological information about something that happened in history. However, rather than sharing the history of a person, it shares the history of an event, time period, place, etc.

Make your historical timeline interactive by linking to video content that shares more in-depth details about the event. You can add pop-ups to provide more information or use hover-over effects to replace the information with new details each time the viewer hovers over a new year.

6. Interactive Gantt Chart Timeline

A Gantt chart is a type of project management chart that helps keep stakeholders and team members on task when working on a major project. It uses pieces of a horizontal bar chart to showcase when each task mentioned needs to be completed and how long it should take.

This way, project stakeholders get a birds’ eye view of what the overall project timeline should look like. They can make sure they’re sticking to deadlines and keeping the project on track.

By creating an interactive Gantt chart, you can take this a bit further. You can add progress bars, like we see in the example above, to dictate how much progress each piece of the puzzle has made. You can also use pop-ups to add more information without cluttering the chart.

7. Company Journey Timeline

This timeline template is an engaging and visually appealing way to showcase your company’s journey from conception to the present day. You can include this infographic in your pitch deck, investment proposal or partnership proposal.

That way, investors, partners, employees, and clients can get a visual overview of how far your company has come, including its history, milestones and achievements over time. Take this design to the next level by adding links to other projects, documents or websites containing:

Personal stories or testimonials from employees who have been with the company for a significant period
Company's future plans and vision. This could involve upcoming product launches, expansion strategies, or long-term goals.

Enhance your timeline with images and videos of key moments, product launches, office openings, or significant achievements. And if you want to use abstract images, you can choose from Visme’s library of icons, stock photos or videos. Alternatively, you can generate unique visuals with Visme’s AI image generator.

8. Interactive Biological Timeline

A biological timeline is a unique timeline that shares ecological information, like the above example sharing the lifespan of an American alligator. This timeline is often used by scientists to share biological information with the world.

Creators can easily make a biological timeline interactive by adding in hoverable photos to depict various stages of the life cycle, as well as make other information appear or link to videos or websites for viewers to learn even more.

9. Interactive Project Timeline

Finally, you can use an interactive timeline to showcase the overall timeline and plan of a project within your business or team. Add interactive features that again link out to your project management software or include audio hotspots where higher-ups can explain what they’re looking for.

You can even incorporate animated illustrations like we have in the template example above to make your timeline even more engaging.

10. Interactive Project Timeline Infographic

Unlike our previous example, this interactive project timeline design arranges the timeline in a horizontal format. It provides a visual representation of the monthly activities for a project. You can use it as a project management tool to monitor progress towards tasks to ensure they're completed in a timely fashion. To make it interactive, you can apply animated effects to the text, icons, graphics and illustrations used in this timeline.

5 Ways to Use an Interactive Timeline

Now that you know what an interactive timeline is and what they look like, what would you even want to use this type of timeline for? Let’s start with just five ideas (because, really, the possibilities are endless).

Share It With Prospective Clients

With Visme, you can easily share your interactive timeline online—either publicly or privately—so your prospective clients can view the information and interact with each element to fully understand the project timeline.

Share marketing strategy timelines, website design timelines, product launch timelines and so much more with Visme.

Simply click the Share button in the top right corner of the Visme editor then choose between the public or private tab. You can publish your project to share it publicly with a number of viewers, or you can choose to share it privately via email address with only your clients.

Integrate It Into Your Training Content

Creating effective training materials is key when onboarding new employees. And incorporating interactive elements within your training materials can help create a more engaging manual, helping new employees to actually retain the information provided.

Inputting an interactive timeline into your training content is a great idea. This can provide information for their first 30, 60 and 90 days, a detailed timeline for how long onboarding and training might take or even just a sample timeline for a sample project.

Add It to Reports or Proposals

Visme also allows users to create online, interactive documents, so popping an interactive timeline right inside of a report or proposal is 100% doable. And it can add a lot to said report or proposal.

When creating a report, adding an interactive timeline can help you depict exactly what the last month or quarter has looked like, providing even more data as to why the numbers are what they are.

If you’re working on a business proposal, you can include an interactive timeline as an even more dynamic way of showcasing how long your project will take, what the prospective client can expect and more.

Present It In Meetings or Webinars

Add your interactive timeline to a presentation or webinar, or present a standalone timeline in an upcoming meeting. This is a great idea for scrum or agile teams that regularly need to present their project timelines.

Simply create a timeline template (or use one of the timeline examples from above). You can easily customize it for each sprint with new timelines and project information and present it to your team or superiors.

Visme makes it easy to present both synchronously and asynchronously. Either record your presentation and send out the link or use present mode to go live in front of your team.

Embed It on Your Website

If you’re creating a public-facing interactive timeline, Visme can also create an embed code for you to place it right on your website or within a blog post. This way, your website visitors can interact with it whenever they land on that page.

This is perfect for public timelines, like a new product launch, an IPO, a company history timeline or something similar.

Never Create a Boring Timeline Again With Visme

You’ve created your last static project timeline. With the help of Visme’s timeline maker, you can now create unique, engaging, interactive timelines that will help your team better manage projects, understand deliverables and stick to deadlines.