What Makes a Video Thumbnail Clickable?
Sep 26, 2022
A thumbnail earns the click when it carries one clear idea, not when it looks polished. Four things decide it: a promise specific enough to be worth a click, text you can read at fingernail size, a face making real eye contact, and a look that breaks the pattern of everything sitting around it.
Why do good-looking thumbnails still get ignored?
Because a thumbnail with nothing to say cannot be rescued by making it look better. Ridge treats a bland thumbnail as a concept problem rather than a craft problem, which is why our own briefs settle the idea first and only then move on to type, colour and crop. Skip that order and you get the same picture every time: a face, some words beside it, and no reason to click.
The test is short. Say what the video is about in three words. If you cannot, there is no idea in it yet, and every design decision after that point is decoration. This is the same discipline that decides whether the video was worth making at all, which is really a question about your wider video strategy.
What actually has to be in the thumbnail?
Chris set out four elements in the episode this post came from, and they have held up.
A promise specific enough to be worth a click. The words on a thumbnail are not the video's title, they are the promise, and they need to be simple enough to read in a second. Writing the two together is harder than it looks. If the wording is the part you are stuck on, writing the headline covers that job on its own.
Text you can genuinely read. Big, bold, high contrast, and few enough words to survive being shrunk. Thin type and grey on dark both disappear at real size.
A face at real scale. Faces stop people, and a recognisable one stops them harder. What does not work is the small circle avatar in the corner, which is the default most video platforms nudge you toward. Either the face fills the frame or it is a proper cutout at a size you can read an expression from.
Something that identifies you. A consistent mark, colour or type treatment so that somebody who already likes your work recognises it before they read a word. Consistency lives in the device, not the picture, so the treatment repeats while the image is free to change every time.
How do you know a thumbnail works before you publish it?
Shrink it. A thumbnail is judged at about the size of a fingernail on a phone, not at full width on the monitor you designed it on. Ridge checks every thumbnail at real scale before it goes out, a habit that came directly from a batch that looked confident on a desktop and fell apart in a feed.
Two other checks are worth running at the same time. Nothing should clip, so keep type and logos inside roughly eight per cent from each edge, because a cropped word is a fail on its own. And ask the honest question: is this a face with words next to it and no idea behind it? If a set of thumbnails all reuse the same photo and the same layout, that is a fail too, even when each one looks fine alone.
What do you do when the competing thumbnails already look good?
Change direction rather than volume. When your colourful thumbnail sits in a sea of other colourful thumbnails, adding more colour makes you blend in faster. Black and white in a bright row does the opposite. So does a single object on a plain ground when everyone else is using a face.
The platform itself is part of this. YouTube's own surface is mostly white, black and grey, so a bold brand colour has somewhere to pop. Use the colours that belong to you and keep them steady, and the consistency starts doing work on its own once people have seen a few of them.
Does putting someone's name in the thumbnail work?
In a video sent to one person, yes. Putting the prospect's or client's name in the thumbnail is hard to ignore, because it is visibly not a broadcast. Chris does this with a deliberately low-tech trick: he writes the name on a whiteboard in black marker and holds it up as the first thing on camera, so the platform picks it up automatically and there is nothing to make afterwards. It is not elegant. It works.
That is a different job from a public thumbnail, and the sales video thumbnail covers it properly. Winning the click is also only half the problem: what happens in the first few seconds is what decides whether the click was worth anything.
Frequently asked questions
What is a video thumbnail?
A static image inside the player that represents your video and gives the audience an idea of what they will see at a glance. The term came from still images, where a thumbnail was a small version of a larger picture you could scan quickly while browsing. On a video it is the first impression of the whole piece, and often the only one you get.
What makes a YouTube thumbnail clickable?
The same four elements, under one extra pressure: on YouTube your thumbnail sits in a grid against people who have also tried. Readable text, a face at real scale and a specific promise get you level with them. Looking different from the row around you is what wins the click. If everything nearby is bright and busy, restraint can be the thing that stands out.
How do you make a clickable thumbnail without a designer?
Start with the idea rather than the tool. Write what the video is about in three words, choose one word to emphasise, and set it in the largest type that fits with room to spare. Use a real photo with eye contact instead of a stock image. Then shrink the whole thing to thumbnail size and see whether you can still read it. Nearly all of the quality comes from those decisions, not from the software.
Should you use the thumbnail the platform generates for you?
No. An automatically generated frame is whatever the video happened to be showing at that moment, usually mid-blink or mid-word, and it makes no promise at all. Choosing your own image takes minutes and is the easiest improvement available on a video you have already recorded.
Transcript
Read the full transcript
Chris Schwager
Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast. It takes a mystery out of video production and provides business leaders support to help them break through the monotony of day to day communication.
[00:00:12] I'm your host, Chris Schwager. And if you want prospects and clients to click the play button of your video, whether it's on social media, YouTube, or emails and increase views, then here's a video marketing tip, make that thumbnail clickable.
[00:00:28] Most of the time a thumbnail is a static image within the player that represents your video and gives the audience an idea of what the viewer will see at a glance. The term thumbnail originated with still images. A thumbnail was a smaller version of a full digital image that could easily be viewed while browsing a number of images.
[00:00:51] A video thumbnail is your viewers first impression of your video. I can't stress how important it is these days to get that thumbnail looking right. Because it is the click bait. A good thumbnail makes you wanna watch a video, but it will also create a perceived point of difference from competing videos around it such as you might have been seeing on YouTube.
[00:01:15] So the essential elements of a thumbnail, here's a couple to consider.
[00:01:20] First, thumbnail title. Have it clearly convey your video subject, which needs to be simple. Promise what you're going to deliver in that title. Two, be big, bold, and easy to read when you include text in your thumbnail. Three, the face or the hero at the forefront of the thumbnail can improve clickability. For example, if it's a celebrity face or it's somebody recognizable, so consider that. Four include branding. If it's a well known brand, of course, you know, the apple for apple Mac, of course, people are gonna know there's something in there about apple. So it's very easy to recognize.
[00:01:59] The best practices for generating thumbnails. Here are a couple there's multiple CTAs. You can use to call them to act on your video. So here's a couple that you're gonna be able to use. One don't rely on random generated thumbnail of the app, such as YouTube or Instagram. You've gotta personalize your thumbnail as much as you can and that takes time. Writing subject lines and thumbnails is one of the hardest things to get right. Uh. There are specialists out there that can support you with that. You know, we are very particular about it and we know how much energy goes into providing thumbnails for our clients. In video emails, for instance, put the name of your prospect or the client in the thumbnail. You know, who can resist a message that has their name on it. So that's a really great tactic. I use a whiteboard scribble, a black marker on a white board and hold it up as the first image. So it's auto populated by the time I publish the content, because I want that to be fast. It's not overly attractive. But it works. It definitely works. Hi Jonah. It totally works to have that in there.
[00:03:07] Two, make it look different. Now I'm talking about YouTube because if your colorful thumbnail is in the sea of other competing channels, all with beautiful colored thumbnails. And it may be time to think about how you can look, make it look different and change it up a bit. Colors are a key factor in how to make your thumbnail great. But if everybody's color, maybe you consider black and white or just changing it up in the design and getting professional design to look at it. Example, YouTube platform is either primary, white or black or gray. So. Bold colors can really pop out. Use the colors that feature your brand design to leave a longer impression. And so that people won't forget. So I'm talking about really corporate cohesion here. I'm talking about a color that's recognizable. If people already subscribe to your brand, they're gonna get that consistent look and feel across all of your videos, no matter where they are.
[00:04:05] Three use close ups as hero images, as much as possible faces really matter in this process, make humans stop to register the face and study it. Whether they're done subconsciously or otherwise, faces can really help convey what the video is going to be about. And we all know that faces, we all gravitate towards faces in any decision making process.
[00:04:30] And four, make it large, make it bold, make it loud, sum up precisely what the video will be about. Thumbnail strategy, posing a question to make people want to click and find out how good it is and what it is you are trying to say . Is vitally important.
[00:04:49] So here are some examples of what a catchy thumbnail might look with the text. So here's a dog food company. They could probably put why I will never choose this dog food. Now that is really interesting and particularly when you've gotta maybe the product on there as well, it's a very compelling title to be clicking on because those that are purchasing dog food, for instance, want the pros and cons and they wanna explore everything before they go down that rabbit hole. Uh. Another great one. Uh. "Is this dog food real?" Again, very compelling. Um. Leaves the, uh, potential viewer wondering yes or no to that question, which is a really great start as well. And finally, another example of dog food. "Is this the best dog food" Arguably. You don't know until you click and find out. So there's some great examples of how to customize video thumbnails. It can make all the difference when it comes to viewers clicking through to your video.
[00:05:54] Good thumbnail makes you wanna watch the video, a bad thumbnail or no thumbnail is gonna do nothing. If you want more personalized coaching on creating thumbnail images to improve your performance of your videos, then jump on a 15 minute video call with me and tell me what I can help you with join in next week where you'll get weekly Video Made Simple ideas to present your videos like a pro that's all for this episode.
[00:06:19] Thanks again for listening and see you next week.
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