Do you check YouTube analytics often? Do you know which ones you should be most concerned about? If you are curious about which YouTube analytics are most important to be watching, you are in the right place!
The most important YouTube analytics are watch time, impressions, click-through rate, most popular videos, audience information, actions per video, and audience retention. Many things are measured through YouTube analytics, but these are just a few of the available statistics to choose from.
By viewing and analyzing these analytics, you can make a significant difference in the performance of your YouTube channel. If you would like to know more about each of these analytics and why they are significant, keep reading!
Impressions Click-Through Rate
This analytic refers to how many viewers took the action to click on the video as they saw it appear on their feed. The impression click-through rate’s main purpose is to give you design feedback on the appeal your thumbnail has to the viewer as they scroll past it. If the video’s first impression isn’t enough to get the viewer to at least click on it, there are some adjustments that need to be made.
All other analytics are reliant on this one to even exist. If they don’t first click on the video to play, there is no purpose in analyzing any of the other numbers, because there won’t be any numbers to analyze in the first place. A way you can make sure your impressions click-through rate is always high is to take extra time and care in creating eye-catching thumbnails and intriguing titles for your videos.
Watch Time
When you are analyzing the overall watch time of either a video or the amount of watch time you have on your YouTube channel overall, it is important to recognize that YouTube Analytics shows the average of those numbers. That being said, you shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed when the percentage doesn’t show up as 100% of viewers watched 100% of the duration of your videos, because that isn’t feasible for anyone.
One of the things that watch time can tell you is how satisfied your viewers are with the video they watched. They may have come to your video to answer a question they had, or they may have watched the video to find out the reasoning behind the exciting or concerning thumbnail.
Whatever the case, if the viewer isn’t satisfied by the alignment of intrigue they felt when they viewed the thumbnail to when they were watching the video, and they decide to click out in the middle of the video, that may be telling of how well the content of the video and the title and thumbnail are creating a cohesive experience for the viewer.
Most Popular Videos
Finding this analytic is a little different than all of the others. In order to find this analytic and how it’s performing, you should go to your YouTube page, click the filter button, and select “most popular”. This will allow you to then see your most watched videos in descending order.
This analytic helps you to get to know your audience better. It will tell you which videos of yours your audience watches the most and will give you an idea of what future content you could create based on the type of videos that have done well already. It is also helpful in being able to recognize what content your audience is not interested in, and whether or not you want to move away from that.
Audience Information
Audience information may just be the one analytic that is the most important in regards to the success of your YouTube channel. If you don’t know your audience—who they are, what type of content they watch, and their habits such as when or how long they watch a video—then it will be an impossible guessing game to try and assume your audience’s actions. Doing this will reap no benefits.
The two most important metrics to assess when looking at audience information are the internal traffic sources and the external traffic sources. Internal traffic means that the user searched that video within the website or came to that specific video through it being suggested. External traffic means the user came to watch that video through a Google search, an outside website, or a link.
Knowing where and how the audience came to interact with your channel and content can tell you what is working and what is not. If your viewers are coming internally, then your channel is visually appealing, and your content is relevant to what they’re looking for. If your viewers are coming externally, then maybe those who come to your videos through the links in the emails you send out are effective and you should then continue to send those out.
Actions Per Video
An important aspect of a successful YouTube video and channel is having a call to action at some point during the viewer’s interaction. Having a lot of views is a good thing, but if you have lots of views with even fewer subscribers to your channel, then there really is no lasting success in that.
Adding some “call to action” that the viewer is prompted to interact with multiple times throughout their experience will increase the chances of having more active participation with your viewers and subscribers, rather than having passive viewers visiting your channel with nothing to show for it.
Audience Retention
This analytic is important in letting you know whether or not your videos are keeping hold of your viewer’s attention or not. This is shown by measuring if and where the viewer stops the video and leaves. This can help you identify two things: whether your content is interesting to your audience or not, as well as if the content you are making is too lengthy. Then, you can then gauge how long to make future videos so the viewer doesn’t get bored or feel like they don’t have the time to finish the video.
