Video chapters are timestamps that divide a video into named sections. For content longer than a few minutes, they significantly improve the experience, because the viewer is looking for a specific answer and does not want to scrub through blindly. In practice they bring three things: higher viewership of the relevant sections, the ability to link directly to a specific moment, and better processability of the content, since chapter titles function as headings. Treat chapter naming the way you would headings in an article – specific, with a question or a precise name, not as introduction, main part and conclusion. Chapters also indicate whether a video is unnecessarily long: if one chapter accounts for half the running time, it should be split. For corporate videos, chapters also make it easier for salespeople to send a client exactly the section that answers their question, instead of the whole running time.
See also: Video transcript, Viewer retention, Step-by-step guide as a format.
