Retention rate...

[BrettTaylorYT]

My retention rate for videos is extremely low (I have 160 total views and only 181 minutes watched...) how can I hold the viewers attention longer?

 

[Ezrider92356]

one thing that can help is to study your relative and absolute audience retention graphs in your video's and see where people are clicking away and see if you can determine a reason why.

is the pace of the video to slow are you dwelling on one point too long or repeating yourself/talking in circles. is there not enough going on in the video. are you moving to fast or not being descriptive enough and people are getting lost. ect ect ect.

 

[Refresh]

I'd have to say the best way to do that is have an eye catching clip right at the start of the video. For me as I am a commentary channel it lets me play an outlandish part of the clip or video I will be talking about.

Keeping them engaged for longer however is harder, to be honest my only advice is make videos that don't ramble and that are entertaining. Hope I helped in some way with this generic advice, haha.

 

[Looped Fruit]

Usually shorter videos are better, many people have short attention spans. Can put more time in making a quality video that is around 5 minutes. I aim to make my videos around 5 minutes long. Depending what type of channel you are, I add pictures every now and then to break up the video. I do some visual edits throughout the video to keep it interesting. Good luck!

 

[Seansie]

As others have mentioned, making the first few seconds eye catching/thought provoking/etc. is a major hook for viewers. It’s the first thing they hear and see of you, so make it interesting and memorable. That’s why so many YouTubers have unique intros and things they say that are specific to them. You can approach this in multiple ways - a comedic beginning, asking a question, interesting b roll and footage montage, the list goes on. If you don’t get the viewers in the first few seconds, you won’t have them for the rest of the video. I’ve clicked out of a video after a few seconds for multiple different reasons. Sometimes it’s as simple as ensuring the background audio is not going to murder people’s ear drums.

For my videos I write scripts, so sometimes I’ll remind myself while recording that I need to talk faster. This really helps ensure the pace is still moving and there’s no awkward breaks. People (generally) take in info faster hearing it than reading it.
Although... I know your channel is more of vlogs, so I’d say really ask yourself if certain clips need to be in the video. Scrub through the sections to find places where cut video doesn’t flow well and try to add in or get rid of stuff to clear it up a bit.
Good luck!