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Give Your Online Visibility More Flavor With A “Favicon”
By Paul Richlovsky | September 4, 2007
Everybody loves icons: FDR, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jordan. But I’m also talking about favicons (“favorites icons”), those little 16X16 pixel boxes displayed next to the names of websites in your browser’s URL bar, favorite places, or bookmarks toolbar. Also known as “website icons,” “page icons” and “urlicons,” the favicon should be embraced by people who are serious about marketing their websites.
I love favicons. You should, too. Here’s why: they’re easy but essential ways to brand your website. I am amazed at the number of otherwise quality websites who neglect this step of uploading some simple html graphic code to their URL’s root directory. That’s all it takes.
“Oh, shucks. I don’t have a favicon ready to plug in,” I can hear you say. Never fear, you can handily make your own favicon here.
On IE7 you can see these icons in a row at the top of your browser, as well as in each tab just below, to the left of the text drawn from the title tags. Don’t forget about the one to the left of the URL in the address bar. How many favicons can you count?
Using Firefox (global market share around 25%), the top row of icons is even spiffier:
Note: You don’t even need words here! Allowing you to save precious space (and appeal to your inner visual self), the Firefox bookmarks toolbar displays websites as favicons without label text if you like it that way. Only the favicon is displayed.
How many of my favicons do you recognize? If you delete the text like I did and forget what sites your own favicons represent, you can hover over them before you click, and the URL will be displayed in a hovering alt.-tag in both IE and Firefox. Do away with needless clutter and long pull-down menus.
The bottom line is that if I’m a casual web-surfing customer and I want to appreciate or remember your site’s logo, you should serve up a favicon so that when I bookmark your site in my browser for many happy returns, an image of your site’s stylish icon will be singed on my brain like a mark on a Holstein’s rump. I want to remember you.
Don’t be alone out there in the pasture of forgotten websites!
Visit our search engine marketing forum.
Want to know more about online videos?
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September 5th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Your post was practical and easy to follow. It’s another sign of the many ways we can use our computers to make sense of a whirlwind of info that comes our way.