I recently got this email from someone – they wanted me to check out a couple of videos and had put the video duration next to the YouTube link. Made me smile – I know this is a psychological trick to get better click-through (or open) rates.

How do I know? Because I have tried this out myself, did some informal A/B testing, and it works!. The open rates were significantly higher than what they would be without the duration cue! Sharing examples below

So – If you’re emailing a video link to someone, or sharing on social media – just add a small text with its duration.

But how does the psychology of this hack work? I’d imagine this is what happens –

When you share the video link, you have 3 segments of possible user responses

A – the people who’ll anyway click the link
B – the people who are “maybe/maybe-not” fence sitters
C – the folks who’ll definitely not click

By putting the duration next to the link, you’re building up the right user expectancy. In the short attention span world of today, you’ve given them an advance warning – the “outer limit to the time investment” they have to make in the video. And this cue is enough to make some of the folks in “B” click (which they would not have otherwise!). This is the incremental click-through rate that accrues to you and shows up in the overall metric.

I write this post for a couple of reasons. The first (obvious) one is to share the productivity hack, so others can benefit from it. But the second (and more imp) reason is to point out how small, seemingly silly (or innocuous) details in how the product is designed & built has a disproportionate impact on the key metrics. Attention to (the minutest) details was one of Steve Job’s superpowers!