YouTube recently announced a number of changes to its format which are intended to give it a cleaner and livelier design. And these changes should be helpful to a lot of creators that use YouTube for how-to videos and other demonstrations.

New Features on YouTube Enhance Video Watching Experience

The changes should enhance the video-viewing experience, but they could also impact how creators construct their videos in order to maximize the usefulness of some of the new features. For example, a new zoom feature will be particularly useful in how-to videos and demonstrations – two video formats that are often favored by businesses providing content to their customers.

The changes have already begun rolling out and will be gradually completed over the next few weeks.

Modernizing YouTube with Innovation

YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan, introduced the latest changes, saying: “When the first YouTube video was uploaded in 2005, YouTube had a search bar and a list of video tags on its homepage. Since then, you could say we’ve gone through some changes. In this latest installment of our Innovation series, we’re sharing a design update that will make YouTube more modern and bring new features to power the YouTube you know and love.”

Some of the more immediately noticeable changes will be how YouTube looks. There are new vibrant color schemes and an ambient mode that uses dynamic color sampling. The mode will produce a subtle effect so the app background color adapts to match the video being played. The Dark Theme has also been darkened so video colors ‘truly pop’.

Other aesthetic changes include YouTube links in video descriptions becoming buttons, as well as the Like, Share and Download functions being formatted to minimize distraction. The Subscribe button is now white and has been reshaped and moved to a more convenient position.

Perhaps more interestingly for small business creators, there are two new actions viewers can use during a video in the form of the new Pinch to Zoom and Precise Seeking functions.

Pinch to Zoom

The new Pinch to Zoom function allows users to easily zoom in and out of a video while on an iOS or Android phone. The video will also stay zoomed in after the user lets go, allowing the user to enjoy the video in greater detail without holding the zoom in place as you must with an Instagram post.

This new feature can influence how creators construct their videos, knowing that the viewer can zoom in to see more detail. Creators can also include prompts for viewers to zoom in, providing a much more dynamic experience when watching the likes of a how-to video.

Precise Seeking

The new Precise Seeking function is an enhancement on other recent improvements to video navigation that YouTube have introduced. It enables the viewer to quickly find the parts they are most interested in. Viewers are able to long press anywhere on the player to seek the part they want, and also to double tap with two fingers to skip a chapter.

Usefully for creators, YouTube have also added a graph that displays the most frequently replayed moments in a video. This can help creators improve their videos further by informing them as to which parts of older videos viewers keep needing to re-watch.

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This article, “New Features on YouTube Enhance Video Watching Experience” was first published on Small Business Trends