Thumbnails.....

[Delilah Helton]

Hi Everyone!
I am new to this forum and I could use your input on Thumbnails.

I have a guided meditation, self-hypnosis, mind-body channel. I upload my self-hypnosis, meditations, positive affirmations, brainwave entrainment sessions.... I also upload vlogs on my channel.

My channel is growing nicely and a majority (but not all) of my views are coming from mobile.

My question is for best traffic, should I use picture only thumbnails? Or is it best to use Picture + Thumbs.

 

[Crown]

Hi, welcome aboard. Moved to the branding / design forum.

I think for your sort of content, it's useful to have thumbnails that contain a picture + text so that your viewers can quickly differentiate between the different themes and goals of each video.

I had a quick look at your channel and I thought that the thumbnail for the "Planning ahead for success" video from last month was very good. - A good picture with a good-sized text next to it. Nice content by the way - I have used hypnosis and binaural beats in the past to help overcome procrastination and a few other "issues" ^^

 

[FawX]

In my personal experience browsing on mobile and on desktop. The most eye catching thumbnails for me were the ones with a single PNG, solid color background & large text. Despite the fact its very "simple" it tells me everything I need to know in the video.

PNG - Game Character or Meme
Text - Episode Entry/Name
Background - Bright Color (green, blue, yellow)

 

[CaddyBou]

Personally on my own channel, I use eye catching techniques to attract viewers in from my thumbnails.
Lets put it in terms of your context. Sleep for example
First I would put a background which could relate to the video, so maybe a comfortable looking bed. Then I would put an image of either myself or a person sleeping, like a stock photo, highlight it and maybe point an arrow towards it, making the arrow bright and standing out.
I would then add colourful, contrasting big text to make the text stand out, only using keywords for the text and make the arrow start from the text pointing towards the image!
if you need more advice, PM me!

 

[HiEnergy]

Usually I use clipart, highly contrasting text and a simple gradient background for my thumbnails.
I draw those in Inkscape and use clipart svgs from openclipart.org - those are free to use.
E.g. the guitars in my rock track thumbnails are from that site.

 

[Frontier Forge]

I recently overhauled my channel thumb design. My old thumbs were quite bland. I have images and text combined in mine.

 

[Ernie Jo]

I most often just use a thumbnail from my video, but a lot of my videos are filmed in different places or are scripted shorts or something, vs. me filming vlogs from the same place all the time. If that were the case, I would probably do something to switch it up more.

 

[EVO]

I currently run with an image only. I did use text for a while too but prefer the clean look of an image alone.

 

[Gits and Shiggles]

I honestly looked into the colors that psychologically are associated with catching attention and impulsivity........ or you could just objectify women in your thumbnails. That seems to be very effective, sadly...

 

[YouTube4x4]

Interesting question. I always wondered the same. I have been using images and text but my success has been limited. I think the quality and message conveyed by the image has the biggest impact. Not sure there is a "best answer" on this one.