ThumbnailTester is a great tool for making sure your thumbnails and titles are as optimized as possible before you upload. Knowing which alternative to use or what design choices to make are invaluable for increasing your CTR and getting views. In this article, we will give you some tips and trick you can use to be as effective as possible when testing your thumbnails.
What thumbnails to test
One common question we get is how different your tested thumbnails should be. To answer this, we recommend to make at least a couple conceptually different thumbnails. It is good to test multiple versions of the same thumbnail concept, but only doing this can unfortunately make you miss out on better alternatives or see past big flaws in your single base design. By instead testing thumbnails with large visual differences, you can make sure your chosen alternative is one that really draws eyeballs and generates interest.
If you wish to test smaller details, or versions of the same thumbnail concept, we suggest also making a similar number for each other thumbnail concept you test. Even if your results are displayed in a way where a potentially unbalanced playing field is taken into account, giving thought to the number of versions for each tested thumbnail concept, and trying to keep these somewhat equal, will improve your results.
Quantity is important
At a risk of sounding like a broken record, we suggest making multiple visually different thumbnail alternatives to test as effectively as possible. A good number is anywhere between 3-10 thumbnails. Of course, creating a large number of thumbnails takes time, but we promise that the end result will be worth it. To speed this process up a bit, and make sure you don’t get scared away, we’d also like to mention that the thumbnails in your test don’t have to be perfect. You will have time for refining your chosen thumbnail concept after the test is concluded. ThumbnailTester is built for helping you make design decisions, not to be used with already perfect thumbnails.
Sharing your test link
After choosing your thumbnails and titles, you have to share your link to collect responses. Depending on your size and following, the most effective method of doing this may differ. If you are a large creator, chances are that you already have a following to share your link with, in which case we recommend you to use the platform you best reach your core audience from. Maybe you use Twitter a lot? Then sharing it with your followers there may be your best bet. YouTube community posts are another alternatives, or maybe even a membership platform such as Patreon could be effective? Reaching your most dedicated fans will get you the best responses and may even generate hype for the video you’re making!
We’ve now talked about established creators, but what if you’re just trying to get off the ground? If you don’t already have a sizable following, it may be more effective to share your thumbnail test link with friends and family. Of course, a large sample size generates more accurate results, but even a small response count will give you insight into what works and, maybe more importantly, what does not.
Reading the results
The last step in any test is to try to make something out of the data you have collected. The two most important data points you want to look at are the two selection ratios for a certain thumbnail. Both parts of the test, the first where respondents are asked to select the first thumbnail they see and the second where respondents are asked to select their favorite thumbnail, are important in their own way. When reading the data of the first test part, we recommend considering that you’re primarily testing what thumbnail is the most eye-catching, not necessarily the most interesting. That’s where the respondent favorite data comes in because the interest of a thumbnail is what gets you the click. If you find a thumbnail is high on both these lists, you have a winner. If the thumbnails that top one of the lists are low on the other, you may have to consider why that is. What elements make your thumbnail interesting and what brings the audiences’ eyes?
We hope you have learned something from reading this and welcome you to trying out our tool! If you have any questions or suggestions, our twitter (@testthumbnails) is the best place to reach us.