Creating engaging videos on YouTube is an art, and the gateway to capturing viewers’ attention starts with eye-catching thumbnails. Statistics reveal that thumbnails significantly impact a video’s click-through rate (CTR), which is a critical metric for YouTube’s algorithm. In fact, YouTube reports that half of all channels and videos have an impression CTR falling between 2% and 10%. Moreover, 90% of the best-performing videos on YouTube feature custom thumbnails, highlighting the importance of a well-designed thumbnail in driving engagement.

An effective thumbnail serves as a visual hook that can make or break a viewer’s decision to click on a video. With millions of content creators looking for attention, a thumbnail that stands out is not just an option—it’s a necessity. 

In the article, we’ll delve into the top design tools to create killer YouTube thumbnails and a surprise video editing tool to enhance your YouTube videos and increase your click-through rate. Let’s dive in

Table of Contents:

•  Top 7 design tools to create killer YouTube thumbnails
  • Fotor
  • MiriCanvas
  • Visme
  • Placeit
  • PosterMyWall
  • Canva
  • Creatopy
• Video editing tools to boost your YouTube click-through rate
• Summing Up – What are you waiting for?

1: Fotor

Equipped with professionally designed templates, Fotor, an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, empowers users to swiftly craft personalized thumbnails—even without prior graphic design expertise. By incorporating a variety of design elements, you can elevate your thumbnails, attract more views, and maintain consistency in click-through rates.

Additionally, Fotor’s platform encourages creative exploration, enabling tasks such as converting images into transparent thumbnails. These abundant opportunities enhance the visual appeal of your YouTube channel.

Plans and Pricing:

• Basic Plan: Available for all users.
• Pro Plan: Priced at $8.99/month.
• Pro Plus Plan: Priced at $19.99/month.

2 : MiriCanvas

MiriCanvas makes creating click-worthy YouTube thumbnails a walk in the park. Here’s what sets them apart:

• Massive Template Library: No matter your niche, browse a huge selection of high-quality templates for travel, fashion, ASMR, fitness, and more. Find the perfect starting point in seconds.
• Effortless Design: With a user-friendly interface, all the tools you need are at your fingertips in the left panel. Drag, drop, and customize with ease.
• Make Your Thumbnails Pop: MiriCanvas goes beyond basic editing. Explore trendy stickers, custom color themes, and even AI-powered drawings!

Plans to fit your needs: Choose from a free plan to get started, or upgrade to the pro plan for $11.99 per month and unlock even more features.

3 : Visme

Visme, a versatile platform, provides a variety of foundational templates that users can swiftly customize. With easy-to-use editing tools, users can personalize both text and graphics effortlessly. Additionally, Visme offers access to an extensive library of stock images and customizable text graphics.

The platform features a convenient drag-and-drop interface, streamlining the process of creating thumbnails. Users have the flexibility to modify shapes, positions, and sizes to suit their needs.

As for pricing, Visme offers three plans:

• Basic Plan: Ideal for getting started.
• Starter Plan: Priced at $29.00/month.
• Pro Plan: Available for $59.00/month.

4 : Placeit

Placeit, a platform that caters to YouTube creators, provides customizable thumbnail templates. These templates simplify the process of creating branded thumbnails, especially for users who lack design experience. While it may impose some limitations on exceptionally creative designs, it truly shines in maintaining consistency across thumbnails.

With an extensive library of hundreds of templates, Placeit ensures that creators from various niches find suitable options. Its user-friendly search system makes exploration effortless. Moreover, Placeit offers animated previews, allowing users to experiment with different color schemes and fonts, thereby encouraging creativity and customization.

Plans and Pricing: Placeit offers an unlimited subscription plan priced at $9.99 per month.

5: PosterMyWall

Create your YouTube thumbnails with PosterMyWall’s massive library of templates. These designs are a great way to kick off your creations, and with powerful masking and effects tools, you can easily make them visually impressive.

On top of that, PosterMyWall offers advanced text options, making it an even better choice for crafting eye-catching YouTube thumbnails.

Plans and Pricing: PosterMyWall has a free plan, with premium plans starting at $9.95/month and a premium plus plan for $29.95/month.

6: Canva

With its user-friendly interface and beginner-oriented tutorials, Canva caters to design enthusiasts of all skill levels. Beginners can dive in swiftly, while seasoned designers can take advantage of advanced features. Canva’s versatility shines through its meticulously designed templates and an extensive collection of graphic elements like photos, shapes, and icons. Users can effortlessly create custom thumbnail images tailored to their unique design needs.

As for pricing, Canva provides three plans:

• Free Plan: Access basic features at no cost.
• Pro Plan: For $9.99/month, unlock additional premium features.
• Teams Plan: Priced at $25/month, this plan caters to collaborative design efforts within teams.

7: Creatopy

Creatopy provides indispensable tools for creating eye-catching thumbnails that instantly grab viewers’ attention. Their professionally designed templates are visually impactful and can be personalized to harmonize seamlessly with your brand’s aesthetic.

No matter your experience level, Creatopy’s tools empower you to create stunning thumbnails that will boost your channel’s visual appeal.

Plans and Pricing:

• Basic Plan: $32/month
• Pro Plan: $45/month
• Plus Plan: $165/month

What is Steve AI?

Steve AI effortlessly transforms text into engaging video content. Powered by advanced AI technology, it allows users to create captivating videos by inputting text. The platform is equipped with an array of templates and personalization features, perfect for content creators, marketers, and companies aiming to boost their online visibility.

Steve AI simplifies the video production workflow, enabling users to save valuable time and generate attractive videos that engage and expand their viewer base, ultimately enhancing interaction and exposure.

Key Features

Text to Video Conversion: Steve AI excels at turning written content into high-quality videos, diversifying content formats for creators.

Rich Media Library: Access an extensive media library with stock images, videos, and music tracks to enrich your videos.

AI-Driven Templates: The platform provides a variety of AI-generated templates, simplifying the video creation process across different themes and industries.

User-Friendly Interface: Designed for users of all skill levels, from novices to professionals.

Automated Voice over: Steve AI offers an automated voice over feature, enabling users to personalize videos with customizable fonts, colors, and logos, ensuring brand consistency.

Fast Rendering and Export: Steve AI ensures quick video rendering and seamless integration into digital platforms and social media.

Customization Options: Users can personalize videos with customizable fonts, colors, and logos, ensuring brand consistency.

Steve AI Pricing:

• Basic Plan: $15/month
• Starter Plan: $45/month
• Pro Plan: $60/month

We explored the significance of YouTube thumbnails, shedding light on how to create impactful ones and highlighting essential design tools for their production. Designing thumbnails for YouTube opens up vast possibilities to improve your channel’s visual allure and boost viewer interaction. Whether you’re in search of easy-to-use platforms, expert-level templates, or extensive personalization features, you’ll find a design tool that fits your preferences.

By skillfully utilizing these instruments, video makers can forge engaging thumbnails that grab viewers’ interest, increase the likelihood of clicks, and, in turn, contribute to the growth of their YouTube channel. Embark on a journey with these design applications, try out different aesthetics, and pinpoint the perfect tool that meets your thumbnail design needs.

Animation vs Live Action Videos – What works best on YouTube

What are AI-made videos?

Videos made using AI tools that are built to understand scripts/content/idea, choose the best visuals for the context, put the visuals together and build a great video are what we refer to as AI-made videos. In short, it is like having your own personal video making AI assistant that understands what you want to make and creates it for you to simply review and approve.

How is this helpful for content creators?

-Saves time and resources drastically

-Helps maintain consistency in video content creation by automating a big part of it

-Opens up possibilities to bring varied creative visions alive on video, even without prior experience

There are many popular script-to-video tools out there, each with its own unique strengths, that are suitable for different kinds of video content creators. With Steve, there are several USPs tailored to suit diverse video requirements. And, the most exciting one of the USPs is the animation video creation option!

So, what’s exactly is an animation video and how is it different from a live action video? Well, the simple answer is – think Mr Bean animated cartoon vs Rowan Atkinson! Now choosing between the two delightful Mr Beans may be a task for sure, but when it comes to creating AI creating your videos, it works a little differently.

In animated content, your script is understood by the AI and is transformed into scenes rich with animated characters and backgrounds that tell the story you want to tell. Here, you can swap the characters from a huge library of diverse human and animal animated characters to make the video your own. 

In case of live video content, the AI goes through an extensive library of high-quality live action video footage and choose the right ones in every scene to create a narrative. You can also swap the visuals in any scene that you need and search through the video clips library to bring your own flavour in the scenes.

How do you choose which formats work best on YouTube? That usually depends on what kind of videos you are making. Here is a list of popular video types and what formats work best for each:

Video ads – Animated/Live Action

Yes, both of the formats work. To further zero down, think in terms of what your ad is about. If it is about the look and feel of your product then live action would work best with original product images /clips inserted in the scenes. On the other hand, if you are telling a story of your brand or explaining why your business is the best, animated visuals are likely to convey that in a unique, attention-grabbing manner.

Entertainment videos – Live Action

Videos that are meant to entertain with comedy, stories, or just anything else that you want to say are likely to connect better with the audience when there are live visuals of the people and the characters. The expressions of people in live visuals are more relatable and hence more engaging to the audiences in the case of entertainment videos. Specifically, with AI tools, the range of nuanced emotions that can be conveyed in live visuals is better than with animated content.

Educational videos – Animated

Animated content is instantly attractive and adds an interesting layer to even educational videos on dry subjects. With this format, you can present a lot of information in a very light, interactive, engaging way to the audience and also save a ton of time shooting live visuals!

Shorts/mobile-friendly content – Live Action and Animated

Live action videos are a tad bit more suited to the vertical screen dimensions of mobile phones and hence would carry a little bit of an advantage. However, animated content makes up in terms of visual richness and uniqueness too!

Based on your content strategy, your brand voice and your audience preferences, experiment with both live action and animated videos to really keep your audience on their toes and engage with your content! After all, one of the biggest advantages of AI video making tools is also that they let you experiment creatively while doing the heavy lifting of video production for you!

6 Most Loved Video Types for YouTube Content Creators

There are over 200 million content creators in the world today and the creator economy is valued at over $10 billion! Well, clearly it is a great time to be a content creator today. 

The other side of it is that the accessibility of content creation also means there is that much competition and it is important for creators to have a good strategy to grow and thrive for themselves. However, competition works a little differently on digital platforms. It is not always one creator against other, there is space for co-existence and collaboration. 

In this context, the strategy to be a successful content creator depends on a number of other factors, several of which have to do with the platforms themselves. One important factor among these is the growth rate of the platform itself. And, the fastest-growing platform that is a haven for content creators is YouTube!

YouTube consumption, just in the US, has grown steadily from 73% in 2019 to 81% in 2022 while most other popular platforms have remained pretty much stagnant. 

Clearly, YouTube is THE place to be for content creators. But, what is the type of content that works well and gets YouTube content creators those elusive views, subscribers and likes? Here is a list of the most popular video types to consider:

Learning and Development Videos

This includes educational videos, explainer videos showing demo of products, docuseries, and other similar content that teaches something to the viewers. YouTube has become the go-to for people wanting to learn anything from building furniture to software. Instead of tedious pdfs, videos quickly educate while also engaging viewers and hence are popular content types to explore.

How-to videos

This is almost an extension of educational videos but could include more informal topics too! Show simple steps to do anything under the sun from lifting weights to disposing of garbage with How To videos and be more relatable and relevant than ever!

Comedy/goofy videos

Entertainment does remain one of the most common reasons people use YouTube and comedy is a timeless choice! Plan creative, uninhibited, entertaining content to really hook your audience.

Listicle videos

Anything following “Top 10…” piques a certain curiosity, doesn’t it? Listicles are also very popular on YouTube and can be put together with relatively lesser effort. Consider this type of content to explore different topics that do not require a depth of knowledge but instead leverage pop culture.

Reaction videos 

As another way to keep conversations about pop culture going, you can explore reaction videos including commentary videos, challenge videos, satire videos, etc. These really bring out creativity!

Behind-the-scenes videos

People love to know what goes behind the scenes of brands, shows, content production, etc. Leverage footage from bloopers and create BTS videos that the audience will lap up!

You could use a combination of these video formats or focus on doing one of them brilliantly. Find your own voice and start creating content! Steve is with you to make the process of actual video making a breeze, after all!