You watched a good video all the way through, and then the ending came.
You heard "don't forget to like and subscribe and hit the bell", and at the same moment four boxes appeared over the presenter's face, two of them covering his mouth, one with an animated "subscribe", and a fourth for a video you know nothing about. Then the picture cut to black.
And you clicked nothing. Not because you disliked the video, but because you could not tell what was being asked of you, so you picked the easiest option: leaving.
The ending is the cheapest space you have not used
Think about the situation. Someone gave you ten minutes of his time, finished the video, and is now more convinced by you than at any earlier moment, with empty hands and no idea what to do next.
That moment does not come round again. Waste it, and the person leaves your channel having liked it, which is the exact problem we covered in how a passing viewer becomes a subscriber.
The trouble is we cram that moment with four requests, and the fourth erases the first.
Three different tools, not one
We conflate three tools, and each has its own job and its own moment.
The end screen. The boxes that appear at the end of a video, showing another video, a playlist, or a subscribe button. Its job is to move the viewer to the next video.
The card. A small prompt that can appear at any point mid-video. Its job is to answer a question at the moment the viewer is asking it.
The pinned comment. Text you write underneath that stays at the top. Its job is to carry what the video had no room for.
Three tools, three jobs. Use all of them for one purpose and you lose all three.
The one-request rule
Pick one thing you want from the viewer at the end, and delete everything else.
In most cases that one thing is: watch this next video. Not "subscribe", because subscribing arrives on its own after two or three videos, and it is the second view that produces it.
Put one video in the end screen, not four. A single option gets acted on; four get ignored, because choosing is work and the viewer is tired.
Film the ending before you need it
This is the most forgotten step, and it costs a full re-export.
An end screen needs at least the last twenty seconds of the video, and it appears over the picture rather than after it. So if your video ends on a hard cut to black, there is nowhere for it to appear.
Three things to do while filming and cutting:
Make the last twenty seconds a calm shot, you sitting still or a wide of the place, with no crucial line that must not be covered.
Leave empty space at one side of the frame, or along the bottom, so the boxes do not land on your face.
And say out loud what you want: "if you liked this, watch the video on screen now, it has the rest of the story." The voice does what silent boxes cannot, because people do not read at the end, they listen.
Which video do you show
Do not default to the newest one. The newest may have nothing to do with what he just watched.
Show the video that continues the journey: the next step in the same subject, or the answer to the question that naturally follows yours. At that moment the viewer has an appetite for one specific topic, so give him more of it rather than something else.
If you have an ordered playlist on the subject, show the playlist instead, because it carries him down a whole road rather than one video. That connects to what we covered in how to arrange your channel page and playlists.
The card is a mid-video tool, not an ending tool
The most common mistake with cards is putting them at the start or the very end. At the start they push a viewer away before he settles; at the end they compete with the end screen.
A card works in one place: the moment a question forms in the viewer's head.
You say "as I explained in the lighting video", and you put the card exactly there. Or you say "this method needs a longer explanation", and the card points at the video that gives it. One or two cards in a whole video is plenty; more becomes a nuisance.
The pinned comment is the most wasted field
Most channels pin a comment saying "thanks for watching, don't forget to subscribe". That slot is seen by everyone who scrolls into the comments, and it gets spent on a sentence that helps nobody.
Put something useful in it: the link you mentioned but never wrote down, a correction to a mistake you made, an addition you learned after publishing, or a specific question that opens a real conversation.
A specific question beats a general one by a wide margin. "What do you think?" gets no replies. "Which of the two methods do you use, the first or the second?" gets dozens.
Four things not to do
Do not make four requests. Like, subscribe, bell, comment, watch and share adds up to zero.
Do not thank people at length. One sentence, then move to the request.
Do not end on music and a logo alone. Ten seconds of silent motion graphics and people leave for no reason.
Do not cut mid-sentence. An abrupt ending cancels any effect the end screen might have had.
How to tell whether it is working
Open the retention graph for a video you published a month ago and look at the end. You will find a drop there, and that is always normal. What matters is how big the drop is and exactly where it starts, and we covered reading that graph in the retention curve and where viewers leave.
Then look at the traffic sources for your latest video: if part of it comes from another video on your channel, the end screen is working. If that number is zero, the problem is either that you left no room for it, or that you offered four options, or that you never said out loud what you wanted.
All three are fixable in the next video at no cost.