When buying a car, an apartment or any other type of property that requires a good decision time, it is very common to look at the appearance or image they have. This is the first impression we have about the objects or goods that we are interested in buying.
Today it is increasingly common for these purchases to start over the Internet. On specific web pages about what you want to buy and in the case of cars, entering the official manufacturer's web pages to find out what the specific characteristics of the models are that interest you the most. And that is exactly what they are. You have not understand? We explain in detail everything you need to know to understand the Thumbnail: what it is and how it works.
For this reason, on these pages you will have noticed that a number of miniature photographs are offered, and that by placing the cursor on them they are enlarged so that you can see the image in more detail. These small photographs are known as thumbnails, and they are responsible for offering that first impression (which seeks to be positive) of the objects on the web page.
And that is why today we are going to show you in more detail what these photographs consist of and how they should be used.
What is a thumbnail and what is the purpose of its use?
A thumbnail is a very small photograph that reflects the original size photo since the latter is too large to be the first impression on a web page.
This thumbnail format is not the same on all web pages and social networks that use this technique. Each one of them uses the measures that it deems convenient. So before adding a thumbnail you have to modify the size of the files depending on the general impression you want to create with your followers.
A very clear and famous example is YouTube videos, which are 1280 × 720 thumbnails (with a minimum width of 640 pixels).
And another well-known example is the PC Components website, which has 220-pixel square thumbnails where its articles are displayed.
Uses of thumbnails
These thumbnails get the attention of users who are browsing the social network. Whether it's a video or an image, but the goal is to make a good impression at first glance and make the user interested and click.
And is that taking into account that the size of these images is so small, It is its main advantage since in the cases of web pages that have a large catalog of products, they allow the user to see them all quickly and with hardly any clicks.
Once the customer has quickly found what they want, they will click on it and they will be able to see this product in a larger form or also in its original form if they want. But in addition, the use of reduced photographs has other advantages:
- It saves space in that all the products that are on the same screen are seen in panoramic form.
- The photographs are files that weigh very little and take up little space, so page load times will be optimized
- web, something very important when buying.
- Users can very often enter to see new content or new products that are added, and with a simple glance they want to spend more money.
These thumbnails can be found on a large number of famous web pages and portals such as YouTube or Amazon. Next we are going to talk about some examples of thumbnails that exist and how they are used to help you if you want to add them to your web page.
YouTube
In order to succeed on the most widely used online video platform to date, you must keep in mind that your thumbnails must be attractive to engage the public. These thumbnails offer you a high probability of many clicks and therefore views and even new subscribers are recorded if your content ends up being liked. All this is very important to start in the world of YouTube and you can monetize your channel.
You can take a look at The Coaches's Voice channel, where they organize the videos divided by theme. They also have another section with the most popular videos and another with the most recent videos uploaded to the channel.
YouTube thumbnails look as if the videos were a movie poster, thus capturing the attention of users so that they enter to see the entire video.
Google Images
The Google company is aware of the number of searches per second that users perform on a daily basis. And not only in the web section but also in the images. So the search engine offers thumbnails instead of the original images and in this way you can see all of them taking into account the amount of data that is stored in these images.
In this way, when you enter the images section you will be able to see all of them in a thumbnail, if you click on one of them you will see that it opens in a larger size and you will see that there is more information inside each photo. You will also see that there is a link where the original image is located, so you just have to click on it to see the article or publication.
E.g. When you do a search on Google with the keyword «football» you will see the number of thumbnails that appear related to this topic.
Movistar +
One of the most used telephone operators in Spain and that in 2015 created its streaming platform thanks to the Union between Movistar TV and Canal +. In the application you will be able to see a large catalog that includes a large amount of audiovisual content that you can only enjoy if you are a monthly subscriber. In this case, the use of thumbnails is very similar to that of YouTube, videos with a very small size ordered by categories and in which small images are shown so that the user can see them from the outside and click on the one that may interest him most. .
Ecommerce
If you have a business where you sell products and you are thinking of making a website for online purchases, you should take these into account. thumbnails so that they do not affect the loading time of the web page.
Generally, when a user enters the web page to make a purchase, he looks for the product he wants and sees the thumbnail along with a short description. If you really want to buy the product, you will click on the image to see the original image as well as a more detailed description of the product, as well as additional information such as product shipping, payment methods and return terms, among many other things.
Amazon, the world's largest shopping website also uses thumbnails in different ways to get users' attention.
