- As a new YouTuber,
John would spend hours sketching out thumbnails.
He would edit them tirelessly,
but nobody was clicking on his videos.
His views flatlined, tens of views if he was lucky.
His channel was going nowhere.
- Dude.
- Oh, you're here. Sorry, John.
Just trying to set the scene a little bit.
Anyway, what John didn't realize here
is that his thumbnails were actually works of art,
but they weren't good enough to compel anybody to click
on the videos themselves.
In a really good Twitter thread,
Jay Alto wrote about how creators make the mistake
of focusing too much on the design
rather than the psychology behind their thumbnails.
In Jay's words, "People don't click art.
"They click on a video they want to watch.
"Prioritize capturing why your video
"is worth your viewer's time."
Let's put it this way.
Imagine your favorite director
is about to release a new movie.
The job of the teaser trailer
is to hint to the potential viewer, the fan of the director,
that all the things you want out of this type of movie
are going to be in the movie.
Similarly, your thumbnail plays a crucial role
into getting people to understand what your video is about.
As Jay put it, "The potential viewer knows nothing
"about your video.
"Assume your viewer knows nothing
"and build your thumbnail accordingly."
And that's great advice,
especially if you're a small channel.
If nobody is actively looking for your channel,
but the algorithm gives one of your videos a chance anyway,
you get maybe a split second to try
and stop their scrolling and capture their attention.
To do that, just like John, you need to do your research.
Collect thumbnails that stand out to you
and try to spot patterns in those thumbnails,
even if you're not looking at videos from your niche.
Pick out the thumbnails that raise your curiosity
and then break them down into their various elements.
I want you to analyze how each of these elements
of a thumbnail makes you feel.
Speaking of curiosity, a master at raising curiosity
in a thumbnail and a script would be,
in my opinion, Ryan Trahan.
He made this video that should have performed really well.
The thumbnail looked good.
He nailed the editing.
Video retention was even high,
but the video just wasn't getting any clicks.
He was pretty baffled
until he saw the thumbnail in dark mode on his phone.
By simply changing the thumbnail's background
from dark to bright green, Ryan saved his video.
The thing is, a lot of YouTubers
end up making their thumbnails on maybe a big 4K monitor
and they're really incensed by all the big,
bright elements on the screen,
but there's an important element of this
that's easy to miss, even if you have experience,
and that is that most people
will be maybe scrolling on their phone,
they're going to see this thumbnail in a much smaller size.
That means your thumbnails need to be simple.
They need to be high-contrast
with visually striking details,
and you need to leave all those tiny little details
out of the thumbnail.
Mobile comes first now
because a thumbnail that could do very well on a TV
or desktop mode could completely flop on mobile.
One design trick I'm sure you've seen a million times
across YouTube would be the YouTuber face thumbnails.
You know the ones, the face takes up, like, half the screen
and it's always in some kind of weird expression
that people wouldn't normally make
in their day-to-day lives.
These closeup faces though can't help,
but make some kind of human emotional connection.
Depending on your niche though, even if it's not a face,
you can still adopt this tactic for your own thumbnails.
That's because closeups of intriguing objects
or gadgets also work.
Maybe it's a cute animal
or maybe it's some cheese melting off the tip
of a slice of pizza.
Having these details, these nice big elements,
already help viewers start to understand
what your video's about before they've even clicked on it.
- You mean like this?
- Ugh, not exactly.
Just make sure when you're creating your thumbnail,
using other elements can help as well.
You can leverage arrows or symbols
or even fingers pointing at key details.
These can quickly direct a viewer's eye
all across the thumbnail.
Take this strategy used all the time by Mr. Beast,
playing with perspective to add intrigue,
a tiny person next to a giant object, flat versus detailed.
Again, it all makes people curious
as to what else is in this video.
The goal here is to create a journey
from the thumbnail to even the title.
If people are willing to follow that journey
with both of those elements,
they've kind of already started watching the video.
They could already be hooked,
making them way more likely to actually click.
That's why it's so important
that your title compliments your thumbnail or vice versa
and not have these two things repeat each other.
You can use words to amplify the title
and add some intrigue, not too many though.
Overall, you want to always be avoiding clutter.
Big, bold text can add emphasis,
while smaller text can help allude to maybe a payoff.
You can use text, but not too much,
to give your viewers some clues,
but not give everything away.
Well, you would think that once your thumbnail
leaves its editing software, you're done.
Turns out, that's not the case.
I would advise that you start tracking
which of your thumbnails have performed better than others.
You wanna always be testing what's working best
in your niche and on your channel.
One tool you can use to get some extra help
with this is thumbnailpreview.com.
This will help you visualize what your thumbnail looks like
on an actual YouTube page.
- Wow, yeah, this looks like trash.
- Keep testing different thumbnails over and over
until you get one that starts to stand out from the rest
and once that video's finally posted,
you can use our tools, vidIQ or YouTube Studio,
just to track and see how it does over the long run,
so you can inform decisions about future thumbnails
and future titles.
Wow, I gotta admit, I was kind of worried there
for a minute, but hey, not bad.
- Well, thanks.
- The truth is though,
a high click-through rate is not gonna do a whole lot
for your watch time or your video's longevity.
So let's get to work on your editing.
That video is right here.