Serious question, why does everyone overcomplicate thumbnail design?

I spent hours in Canva last month trying to match colors and fonts for a video, then a buddy said just use one bold text overlay and a close-up face shot. My click rate jumped from 4% to 11% in a week. Has anyone else found that simpler thumbs actually work better?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamesm387d ago

Seventy bucks and three hours wasted on a "perfect" thumbnail template before I realized nobody notices the little gradient shadows. Click-through went up 15% when I just used my face looking mildly confused and a red circle with text. Simple is kind of boring until you see the analytics, then it's the only way to go.

angela6877d ago

Sixty bucks worth of clip art and two hours of my life gone trying to make a "professional" thumbnail with drop shadows and 3D text. Then I put up one with just my face looking mildly annoyed and a giant yellow arrow pointing at nothing in particular, and that's the one that got the most clicks. People are way more simple than we give them credit for. The fancy stuff just makes us feel better about ourselves while the viewer scrolls right past it. My analytics look like a kid's drawing compared to what I thought was working. Now I just do whatever takes under five minutes, and the numbers hold up fine.