A buddy of mine broke down why my thumbnails were flopping

I was venting to my friend Chris last weekend about my latest video getting way less clicks than usual. He asked to see my thumbnail and pointed out how cluttered it was with text and random graphics. Chris said viewers scroll fast and only stop if they can understand the image in under a second. He showed me his own recent thumbnail with just one bold face and a simple background, and it had double the CTR. I tried simplifying my next thumbnail to just a clear shot of me reacting and one short word. The video hit my best first-day stats in 3 months. Has anyone else had a friend or peer spot something obvious you were totally missing in your content?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_morgan7d ago

Chris pointed out the same thing to me about 8 months ago. I had this thumbnail with a bunch of arrows and text like "INSANE" and "NEW STRAT" all over it. He made me change it to just my face looking surprised with a solid red background. CTR went from like 4% to 9% overnight. Now I force myself to delete everything in the thumbnail except one person and maybe two words max. It feels wrong at first because you want to pack in info but less really is more when people are scrolling.

alice_palmer206d ago

The jump from 4% to 9% is wild but I've seen the same thing happen. I had a video doing okay around 3% CTR for weeks. Changed the thumbnail to just a close up of my face with one arrow pointing at something and it doubled within two days. People scroll so fast you basically have one split second to grab them.