Oof, those CTRs are most likely the biggest culprit.
This is purely anecdotal evidence, but whenever my CTR dips below 15% for the first 300-500 views, that video is done, it will NOT get recommended on Homepage nowhere near as much as videos that do manage to maintain ~15% for the first couple hundred views. After that initial burst of views, if you can maintain 10% CTR for a while longer, that seems to be a sweet spot to keep getting suggested on Homepage for longer than 24-48 hours. At least for me. Tech niche might require even higher CTRs. Or maybe it's 10% site-wide, I don't know, but there is some minimum for everybody, I'm sure.
A video I uploaded 8-9 days ago managed to keep just a lil bit above 10% CTR consistently for the first 3-4 days, with average view duration of well over 5 minutes, amounting to almost 40% retention rate. I don't know whether this is a bare minimum required to get a big push by YT algo, but that was the best combination of metrics I managed to get so far and the video went semi-viral on Homepage, getting recommended 170k+ times and accumulating 22k+ views since upload.
Stuff that works for me:
- Contrast is everything. Make the letters colour pop out, "stab" viewers' eyes as much as possible - whenever I test thumbnails with stuff that blends in a bit more than it pops out, I get bad CTRs.
- Massive font size, as big as possible. Nowadays I routinely break 200px font sizes. I even further increase the width and height of letters to fill up as much of the space on the images as possible
- Fewer words are better, for the most part. Exceptions exist, use common sense and good judgement.
- Avoid putting text in the bottom right corner, that's where the video length is shown and people can't read words below it. Avoid putting anything important in the bottom right corner, period.
- Stroke. I just recently started putting very thick black stroke around the letters and thin white stroke around humanoid images. It worked better than I expected, so try it out.
I can't and won't guarantee you see any improvements after changing thumbnails according to my suggestions, but it is at least something to test out for yourself.
For audience retention, I've long been struggling to break 20% consistently. You seem to already be there for the most part. These day, I can get 30-40%, even though I still dip below with some videos, which is still kinda meh. As someone that has an incurable habit to ramble forever and ever if I don't stick to the script, my suggestion would be to prepare a word-for-word script beforehand and then simply read it. Don't do bullet points, type full sentences, just like you will be saying them in the video. Get into the habit of "sprinting" right away when recording your voice. For example, if you are talking about the top 5 graphics card, instead of having a long-winded intro about semi-relevant or even completely irrelevant stuff, get right to the point within the first 5 seconds.
Something like this:
"In this video, I'm going to tell you EXACTLY which 5 graphics cards to consider buying in 2020. If you don't want to miss out on this critically important information, keep watching, otherwise your life will be ruined! No, but seriously, stick around, all of your doubts will be resolved in just INSERT_LENGTH_OF_THE_VIDEO. The first and dearest to my heart, the one I use personally is INSERT_CARD_NAME... etc etc..."
Don't be afraid to be funny, edgy or "cringy" if need be, or just develop your own style, but make sure to keep it dynamic enough so that people don't fall asleep or simply zone out in the first few minutes. Realistically, you can squeeze at least 10% more retention by just "spitting fire" right away, instead of "hey guys, so I have been thinking about this for a while - these days there is a lot of misinformation about the subject of this video, so I wanted to clear out the confusion you might be having. Anyway, so my idea was to present this blahblahblah..."
Also, sometimes the topic of the video itself isn't that appealing to a larger audience. Or even if it is, the way you "angle" it with your thumbnail and title can still ruin your chances in the algorithm. For example, if talking about GPUs overheating problems, instead of "How to stop your GPU from overheating", you might want to gamble a bit and title your video "You're KILLING your GPU and here's why!" and then put a bloody hand holding a knife over a GPU, with a red word "MURDER!" and maybe even a biohazard sign. Actually, that might be the worst advice I've ever given out seeing how careful you have to be with words on YT these days, but I'm just throwing random ideas, not saying any of it would work. Sometimes, heck, oftentimes you have to present information in a way to catch people's attention, instead of relying on them to be already interested in the topic of your video.
Good luck!
