A YouTube outro, or what is called an “end screen” is your last key to keep a viewer hooked and latched on to your channel. A good outro will not only prompt people to keep on watching more videos from your channel, simultaneously growing your channel’s views, but also help you gain more subscribers.
Before we dive into that, first let us understand what is a YouTube Outro, and how does it help you grow your channel?
A YouTube Outro, or end screen as you might have often noticed, is the last screen that your audience views when the video ends. Now, this outro is crucial for several reasons
- Outros are an excellent way to influence your audience to take action after they finish watching the video.
- You can strategically place relevant videos after a viewer finishes watching one, ensuring your YouTube channel has more watch hours.
- If you are selling a product or service, you can place key links to your website or product page that can redirect the viewer to purchasing the item.
A well-designed YouTube outro is a smart way to capitalize on the ‘hooked’ viewer and helps you further enable them with options that serve you best. A YouTube outro screen might have anyone or a combination of the following features:
Videos: You can place video links or thumbnails based on relevant topics, ensuring the viewer keeps watching your content.
Background/Links to the website: You can choose a combination of the elements listed above, besides that, you can even create a simple background using easily available outro makers that will have slots to link to an external website or product page.
Playlists: In addition to placing links of individual videos, you can also create playlists and link those playlists on the YouTube outro that can serve as a quick view to a bulk of content at a glance.
Subscribe Channel: Placing a “Subscribe Now” button, allows you to link your YouTube channel, making it easier for any viewer to subscribe at the click of a button.
Social Media: YouTube outros are a great way to grow your audience and embed clickable links for your social media pages like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. They are a tried and tested way to let viewers know where they can follow, interact, and engage with you on social media.
How to create a YouTube outro and specific requirements
To place a YouTube outro with specific elements, it is a necessity that your videos should be at least 25 seconds or longer. Now, when you place these elements – you can choose anywhere between 5 seconds to 25 seconds for the element to show on the screen. The optimal YouTube outro screen duration is found to be a healthy 15 seconds. Having the end screen any longer can disengage your viewer, and anything below 15 seconds won’t be enough for them to read and choose what to click next. End screen duration is pivotal if you aim to incorporate several elements for your YouTube outro. As for size, the standard 1920 x 1080px canvas is sufficient.
Now that we know the specific requirements for creating a YouTube outro, how do you get started with creating one?
Step 1. Choose the right online video editing tool
The answer to how to create a video end screen for YouTube starts with finding the right online video editing tool. There are many online video editors available on the web, and most of them are free to use. Loaded with pre-designed templates and additional features like colors, text overlays, and animation, you can conveniently create a YouTube outro.
Step 2. Create a new project and get started
To edit video online, click on start a new project and select the best template you want to use for your YouTube outro. This can be a contrasting background or solid colors. You can also upload custom backgrounds that are a part of your YouTube channel brand identity.
Step 3. Add your text and animations
Once you have selected your overall background and colors, you need to add text, animations that you’d like to include. They make this easy through click and drag features. Make sure they are simple and intuitive.
Step 4. Save the template and export
Keeping your outros consistent is important. This is useful when you are making several YouTube videos for all of your videos. So, you need to save this as a template.
Step 5. Upload the template to YouTube and add elements
Once you have exported your well-designed YouTube outro, you need to upload the template to YouTube where you need to add the end screen elements. This is simple to do – add links to your website, attractive call to action, and playlists.
Go ahead, publish! And don’t forget to come back a few days later and analyze your video performance.
How YouTube outro helps to grow your channel and some best practices
YouTube outros are incredibly powerful tools for increasing views across your channel, for linking viewers to related content, suggesting the relevant playlists – all while adding more value to your audience at the end of each video.
Makes your videos rank higher
YouTube outros help increase your overall channel session time by making your views stay on your channel page longer. This gets directly reflected on the videos as they rank higher, which is a key metric to the YouTube algorithm.
Newly launched videos get more exposure
YouTube places a high value on newly launched videos. It collects data corresponding to your video within the first 24 hours of its release. So, capitalizing on newly launched videos to grow your channel, embedding a YouTube outro, is the smart move.
Pro Tip: Watch time is more important to YouTube that individual views. So, using a YouTube outro allows your viewers to watch more YouTube content available at your channel that undeniably boosts your performance.
Makes for quick and clickable CTA
The conventional way to ask your views to subscribe or check your website is saying those exact words in your recorded video. However, in doing so, you never know if a viewer does that. YouTube outros make it easy to add a CTA and also place a subscriber now button. This means that apart from asking your views to ‘Subscribe now for more videos’, you can place a nicely designed outro that exactly makes them do that!
Concluding notes and some of the best practices you can follow while making your YouTube outro
Clean text and simple design: Since YouTube outros are designed creatives, the best practice for any graphic design element is to keep it clean, and the same applies to this. Avoid too many colors or text sizes. Always keep your text elements clean and design simple and focused.
Consistency: Consistency is key to gaining mind share of your audience. Using your brand colors, logos, fonts, etc. while making your YouTube outro will help your audience quickly associate you with your channel and ingeniously build trust.
Always have the answer to ‘why’ in your mind. We should do no task without having a logical goal in mind, and that applies when you are making YouTube outros. Whether it is to increase more channel subscribers or get more traffic to your website, if you have a clear ‘why’ you are doing what you are doing in your mind – it’ll become easy to design your YouTube outro and grow your channel.
