You might be wondering, "My thumbnails aren’t performing; how can I make them better?” If so, this is the right article for you. There are a lot of elements that make a thumbnail “good” (people clicking on it); this article will go over some of the big ones.
Overcomplicated thumbnails may look nice to you and may feel impressive to make; however, more often than not, they will just make viewers confused, causing them to scroll away. Keep your thumbnails simple; not only does it increase the chance of viewers clicking, but it also speeds up how long it takes to make your thumbnails . “But what does simple mean?” you may be asking. Basically, just don’t add things for the sake of adding them. For example, let's say you have a video about repairing Toyotas. Would it make sense to then have a picture of a sportscar race with a bunch of red arrows? Obviously not. As a bonus, don’t just repeat your title inside your thumbnail; people will already read your title, so there is no point.
Keep it mind, while 69% of viewers came from mobile, 42% of total watch time comes from viewers on TV . You may have just designed your thumbnail for how good it looks in the editor, but don’t forget to actually design it for how good it looks on TV and on mobile. Make sure any images are high quality (duh) and make sure they are large enough to clearly see. All you have to do is test it on mobile, TV, and your own editor and, if you want, how it looks on a tablet. These should be enough to get a good look at how your viewers will see your thumbnails.
You shouldn’t be writing a short story on your thumbnail. At most, keep it to 5 words, but preferably keep it to 0-2. As mentioned above, don’t repeat your title in your thumbnail. A good example of how to use text in your thumbnail goes like this: Let's say you are still making that video about repairing Toyotas; maybe you could have a before and after thumbnail for the repair (this sounds obvious, but the before side is on the left, and after is on the right), and on the after side you could have text pointing to the repaired car saying “fixed” (honestly, you don’t need to specifically say "fixed"; it's implied that if the car is repaired, then it is fixed, but maybe find some other text like “brand new” or “runs like new”).
These tactics, and any others, are things that will probably work; however, they are just theory. So, make sure you properly test any big changes you make, as it doesn’t matter what the theory says if no one is clicking on your thumbnails.
Keep your thumbnails simple, design them for multiple devices, not just your own, don’t overdo text, and make sure to test any big changes you’ve made. If you want a thumbnail editor designed for speed, check ours out and stop wasting so much time creating thumbnails.