Welcome back. In this video, we're going to talk about how to improve your click-through rate
on your YouTube videos. I'm going to show you many examples of what makes a great thumbnail.
We're actually going to do a test. We're going to take a thumbnail that's a poor performer
and make some changes to it and see if it performs better.
Alright, the first thing I'm going to do is show you some examples of where we've improved the
click-through rate on thumbnails. Then I'm going to show you a b split tests where we actually have
2 different thumbnails that compete against each other and how that works. Then I'm going to take
a video that's already live on YouTube but has a poor performing thumbnail and we're going to
redesign one and keep working at it until we get a good performing thumbnail. I want to show you some
examples of really great performing thumbnails. And then I'm going to show you some A/B tests so
you can see the difference that a subtle change will make in the performance. One of the channels
that I like to study is Mr. Beast. His videos get millions of views. And of course, he's up to 46
million subscribers by the time I film this. But his thumbnails always create a lot of curiosity.
Now, his videos are fun, right? It's a different type of video but it's a great example to start
from because even on a how-to video, we can learn a lot from this. What can I put in my thumbnail
that will really create curiosity and make me want to click? So, look at this thumbnail right here,
okay? I filled my brother's house with slime. And I've seen this video. That's not a scene from the
video. So, is that misleading? No. It's all about filling his house with slime. He had to make a
video that showed him. He always makes crazy faces those get a lot of curiosity like what crazy thing
is he doing now. The slime that they made was super hot. So, they couldn't touch it or they had
to wear these like fisherman's waders or something like that so they didn't burn themselves. So,
obviously, this scene is fake. But by showing him with the hose and green stuff coming out of it,
it creates curiosity. And if I see this thumbnail and I create curiosity, I want to see that,
that is what this video is about. So, I do get the reward that I'm searching for.
Okay, look at this thumbnail down here. You know, it's a video about
why he hadn't uploaded for a while. He had taken a break. Well, he was leading up to doing
some really big things on his channel. But look what he did in the thumbnail. He's kind of like,
"I've got a confession to make", he didn't put any text on that thumbnail or anything. But if you saw
that and it's like, "Oh, what? Is he quitting? What's going on? What's going on in his life?"
It makes us totally curious. And it's a video Why Haven't I Been Uploading. And it's got 23
million views. So, I recommend checking out his channel and looking at the thumbnails because he
really is a master when it comes to thumbnail design. Now, Mr. Beast, his name is Jeremy.
He recommends another channel that he loves their thumbnails. So, that's this channel. I'm actually
not familiar with it. But it's dope or nope. So, I thought we could take a look together at some
of these thumbnails. Okay, one pattern I'm seeing is he's making funny faces in all the videos. And
there's a lot of color, there's a lot of clarity. So, it's like this puzzle solves itself,
okay? That's an interesting toy maybe that's a review. So, what these thumbnails do for me? I
haven't seen any of these videos. But I get the impression that he does a really good job. I mean,
you can tell he's taken a lot of time to make the thumbnails really clear, really vibrant
and colorful. I know exactly what the video is about without even looking at the title which
that's pretty cool. He doesn't really add text to these thumbnails yet he's holding this box that
says escape room and he's got a key and I'm like, "Ooh, that's going to be about an escape room."
So, not knowing anything about his channel, if one of these thumbnails were to come up and it were
a topic I was interested in, definitely he would get my attention versus anyone else who'd review
the same product. I have an idea for a test. Let's see if this will work. Okay. So, solving
an escape room in a box. What if I took that title? If I just paste that in the search bar,
let's see what other videos come up. This is good. Look at the other results here. Like there's some
good thumbnails but why do you think dope or nope appears at the top? It's got a person's face in
it, he's surprised, he didn't have to add any text like this one. Overall, the ones at the top are
the top-performing videos... And so, if we were to scroll down, we'll just get worse and worse.
I mean, look at this one right here. Like these people are trying but they haven't added any
color. So, their video has 12,000 views compared to the half-million views. And who knows? Maybe
they're both great videos but there's clearly a difference in the time and effort they put
into their thumbnail. Now, I want to show you some A/B split test examples on what we did to improve
the click-through rate on thumbnails. I've got 4 thumbnails here to show you. These are
the originals. Now, this thumbnail here had a 5.9% click-through rate. This one
had a 6%. This one had a 5.28. And this one, the original actually did pretty good. It was a 7.9.
Then we created a second version. And we posted that and we did the a/b split test. So,
notice how these 2 thumbnails look differently. So, for some reason, there's black bars on the
top and bottom of this one. But that's not part of the thumbnail. So, the thumbnails look identical.
The only difference is the text. We tried to create more curiosity with the text. So,
this one says, "It will make your life easier". We improved it to "Discover these 3 tips". It makes
me more curious about what the 3 tips are. And that improved the click-through rate to 6.85%.
Okay, here's the variation on this one. Original said, "How do you stop these people immediately?"
That's a lot of words. Okay, we reduce the words "This is how you stop them". To me, it makes
me want to know. "Okay, what is it? How do you do it?" Well, that increased the click-through
rate to 7.1%. We weren't sure how this thumbnail would perform. Normally, we put a face on there,
right? But we got a 5.28%. So, we thought, "Alright. Let's see if we can improve that." So,
instead of describing what the video is about, "Play youtube while your screen is off",
we just said "Try this easy trick". And that improved the click-through rate to 6.2. Now,
my last one, you know, it's performing pretty well, 7.9%. But I did notice that there were
6 words there and it is kind of descriptive, kind of similar to what the title is which we
try and avoid. So, we created this variation, "My secret revealed". And we actually got a 9.6. So,
these are just examples of how text can make a drastic difference in the click-through rate
on the thumbnail. And hopefully this is a good illustration of doing a/b tests where you can
compare 2 thumbnails side by side and see which one performs better. Has this been helpful so
far? Okay, I've got more to come on helping you get a higher click-through rate. But I noticed
that you haven't subscribed yet. So, go ahead and take a moment now. Go ahead and click below
here. See that subscribe button, it's red. Now, also, right next to it, there's this little bell.
And if you click that, that will turn on alerts. So, anytime I upload a video you'll get an email
from YouTube letting you know that a new, video is there. Go ahead and subscribe, turn on the alerts.
Now, let's put all this into action. I found a video that really needs to be seen by more
people especially by foster parents. The title of the video is "What does it take to be a foster
parent?" Now, Nicholeen Peck has fostered troubled teens. They were sent to her because other parents
could not handle them and she did such a good job. In fact, the BBC reached out to her because they
wanted her to be on the show The World's Strictest Parent and she did amazing there. So, this episode
that she made really needs a lot more attention but this video isn't performing very well right
now. The click-through rate is low and I assumed. So, when I looked at that thumbnail like,
"You know what? The thumbnail we designed here, it needs some work." When I come over here and look
at reach and I scroll down here, you see... Yeah, the click-through rate right now is only 2.1%.
So, we've got a lot of room for improvement. Instead of critiquing about what we did wrong
in this thumbnail, I just thought let's go back to the drawing board and what should we do? So,
I explored through this video to try and find an image that conveyed some emotion to me that
would make me kind of curious. Like "What is she saying in that moment?" Or "What is she thinking?"
My aim is never to make my clients goofy. And a lot of times people say, "Why do you make me
look so dorky?" or "How come i'm not smiling in my thumbnails?" Well, smiles can work for
some videos. In this episode, where it's titled "What does it take to be a good foster parent?",
we're not looking for something fun. We're really... Like, it's a serious question. Like,
"What does it take? Do I have what it takes to be a good foster parent?" And this still image
of Nicholeen, I really like the clarity that's in her eyes and she's doing something with her hand
that I'm kind of curious about. And I had some idea of some text that I can put on this side. So,
I've opened up the thumbnail template that my team has used to design this thumbnail. And I've also
grabbed this image. I'm just going to select all, copy that and come in here. And we'll just
paste it. So, all I'm really maintaining is the dimensions. Obviously, I need to size this down.
Okay. As I'm adjusting the size, I'm going to zoom out a bit because I want her positioned
on the right side of the screen. And so, I'm going to need to make it bigger so I can have enough
room for some text on the side. And I also I found another image. Let's come over here to story
blocks. I found some images here. I typed an angry child and I thought, "What it what would it be
like to put a photo like this of just this upset child in the background?" So, let me download
that. Okay. So, I'm just going to put a box around this boy and just grab him out of the shot there.
So, this is just a test. I'm not really sure if I like the look of this. I might use the boy or not
I mean, I can try and erase the background. You know, so I could take a lot more time to clean
that up. But really what I'm just trying to see here is is if I like the idea or not. Do I want
him in the background? So, there. That looks a lot better. So, now I'm trying to think about
text. Should I add some text to the screen? Okay, because I'm doing this after the fact.
I can't really find a shot of Nicholeen the way that I would like to be able to use this boy in
the background. For the sake of this episode, I'm going to decide to not include this boy and we'll
see how the thumbnail does just with Nicholeen and with some better text. Okay. So, I'm trying to
decide what text to put on the screen. And I can say a lot of words. But I've learned that
less is better. So, like if there were a 2-word phrase or a 3-word phrase, I'm thinking,
"Do you have what it takes?" is what's in the title. Do you have what it takes
to be a foster parent? And I don't need to be repetitive. I mean 2 words would be "Do you"...
Or.... Well, Devin who's filming with me here, he had a suggestion he says,
"I know". Because with this photo of Nicholeen, she's kind of like pointing at her brain maybe
like, "I know" because she does. She really does know this. That does say something.
Let's try it. And let's do an A/B split test with "I know"
versus the previous thumbnail and we'll see which one has a better click-through rate.
So, Devin and I are chatting because I'm still... Like, I'm really wanting to make
this powerful and I know... Like does that create curiosity? What do you think, Devin?
-What I think is that it puts her in the position of being an expert. Right? This is a reason why
I would click on this video is because I've been there, I know. -Okay. So, that does create more
curiosity. I'll change the colors. Thanks for your help. Alright. Thanks, Devin for your help on that
one. I'm really liking where this is going. I think it creates more curiosity and it matches
kind of the message coming from her eyes in this screenshot that I took here. I'm going
to add a little bit of a shadow to the text and even the default settings that came there.
Look pretty good. Maybe I'll just turn up the opacity on that shadow. See, that's too much.
Just so it's easier to read. Alright, I think I like that a little bit better. Okay. So now,
I'm going to save this thumbnail. Now, I'll just open up the video and if you scroll
down add a new thumbnail. So, I'll change it. Alright. So, I'll just upload that folder there.
Come to the top and hit save. Now, with the magic of video, I can fast forward and show you the
results. Okay, we are now 10 days into the future and I've got some interesting results. In fact,
surprising to me. So, we're going to do this test again for another week or so. Take a look here,
okay? So, since this video was uploaded, we've averaged a 2% click-through rate on this video.
And if I show you just the last week, it dropped. We dropped down to a 1.7% click-through rate.
It's embarrassing that the one that I said would perform better, didn't. But we're going to go
back to the drawing board. I'm going to have my team design another thumbnail. And we'll
keep at it until we design a thumbnail that gets a better click-through rate. So, let's fast forward
now. Alright. Take a look at this. I wanted my team to design a better version and I do think
that they've succeeded. The problem is I picked a channel where we're actually not... We don't have
enough volume to do a/b split testing yet. So, let me show you what I mean. So, when I come in
here and i show the last 28 days on this video, we see that it's got a low click-through rate of 1.4.
And this thumbnail was uploaded somewhere at the end of November. I can just show you the last
week. So, if I go the last 7 days, you see that the click-through rate's only 0.6. But here's
the thing: We only got one view out of it. And we really need to get hundreds of views to have
anything that's statistically significant. So, over time, I think we'll find out whether this is
a better performer or not. And I do think it is. Keep an eye out on my channel because I'm going to
make another video on one of my channels where we get a lot more views and we can do a proper
a/b split test. Improving the click-through rate on a thumbnail doing a/b testing. This is just
one strategy of many that I love to teach. And I've got a free resource for you. It's called
My Influencer Almanac. I've packed all my tips and all my tools and all my strategies into one place
to really help you better leverage YouTube so you can grow your influence and you can grow your
revenue in your business. To get free access to that, go ahead and just click the link below now.