According to Digital World Information, 72% of the most popular thumbnails include a face and get 921,000 more views, on average, than thumbnails without faces. However, adding expressive faces to thumbnails isn't the only thing that can significantly increase the click-through rate on YouTube. Below, we'll share a few YouTube thumbnail optimization strategies you can try out now.

How Thumbnails Affect Your Click-Through Rate

As you may know, thumbnails act as a “hook” for viewers, giving them a preliminary impression of what to expect when they watch your videos. “Correct” thumbnails are especially important in terms of attracting a new audience that is not yet subscribed to you – in particular, if your content appears in the recommendations of at least one of their representatives, an informative and visually attractive thumbnail will encourage them to choose it among the others offered by the YouTube algorithm. It can explain the high importance of thumbnails for increasing CTR.

Advanced Thumbnail Strategies to Boost CTR

So, it’s time to learn how to create a good thumbnail to boost YouTube CTR.

A/B Testing and Analytics

By the time you read this article, you already have at least some experience creating thumbnails, so your goal is to find ways to optimize them to obtain a good click through rate on YouTube. So, having several ready-made thumbnail options at hand, it makes sense for you to conduct a thumbnail A/B testing to determine which one attracts the audience better – to do this, you have to upload the same video with different thumbnails and monitor the CTR analytics for several days.

This analysis will give you a starting point for the effective thumbnail design and allow you to enter the “perfect formula.” By the way, in this video, you will learn more about A/B testing of thumbnails.

Psychology of Thumbnails: What Drives Clicks?

If you try to dive deeper and understand the fundamental drivers of the human psyche, you should consider the following aspects when designing high-performing thumbnails:

  • Red stimulates urgency and action, yellow is usually associated with optimism and energy, and blue evokes trust and calmness – therefore, you will be better off choosing the main color scheme for your YouTube thumbnail background based on these associations;
  • Composition is essential: large titles, faces with “talking” facial expressions, and thumbnail contrasting elements will make your videos as noticeable to their potential viewers as possible.

You can get even more helpful insights on creating an eye-catching thumbnail.

Data-Driven Thumbnails with Heatmaps

Today, several services (in particular, TubeBuddy) based on artificial intelligence algorithms allow you to evaluate the clickability of thumbnails. Moreover, such tools enable content creators to solve the issue of “high impressions, low clicks” by suggesting how to design high CTR thumbnails.

In particular, the results of their analysis are usually demonstrated on generated heat maps, where you can find out exactly which parts of your thumbnail are most likely to attract viewers' attention. After receiving insights about “hot” zones, you will know where it is better to place the main elements on your thumbnail. 

Micro-Adjustments

Now that you have agreed on the basic design of your thumbnail, you can start making minor edits, such as:

  • Change the font or its size;
  • Try rounded corners instead of sharp ones;
  • Add a frame, icon, or text accent, etc.

Ultimately, the approach to creating an engaging thumbnail will be different for each content creator, and what will look like a cringe thumbnail to one will bring millions of views to another. If you are looking for a free thumbnail creation tool, feel free to check this article about Canva (before using it, please make sure that if you already have the draft, it meets the average thumbnail size indicated by this service).