Have you heard the term favicon before? Or does it make you shrug your shoulders and ask ‘what is a favicon?‘ Well you’ve come to the right place. A favicon is a small little icon (16 x 16 pixels) which represents your website. The term favicon is an abbreviation of ‘favourites icon’.
A Favicon is an Icon That Represents Your Website
Why a Favicon is Important For Your Website
Although a favicon isn’t an essential part of your website, it adds a nice cohesive touch that shows you have an eye for detail. In today’s environment of tabbed internet browsing, your favicon helps you ‘own’ your tab. This makes it easier for your users to identify your site, which is another notch in your small business branding arsenal.
Choosing not to have a favicon, simply means that you have a generic page icon representing your website. Just like millions of other websites. How boring. Having a favicon adds a further layer of professionalism, contributing to your sites overall trust factor.
Essential Criteria for a Great Favicon
As your favicon is small, you need to be really smart about how you use the space. The two essential criteria for a great favicon are:
1. Must be legible/understandable: Can the user decipher what your favicon is? The simpler the shape and the fewer the colours – the easier the more recognisable a favicon will be.
2. Must have an obvious link to your small business: Is it obvious that the picture shown in your favicon relates to your small business? Don’t try and be cryptic. You need to be as straightforward as possible.
Determining Your Favicon
In practice, a favicon is usually a derivative of one or more of the following items:
- Your logo
- Your small business name
- Your small business category
- Your primary product or service
- Your mascot
- Your brand colours
It’s a good idea to brainstorm the points above and come up with a possible favicon shortlist.
Learn From Other Famous Favicons
Stuck for inspiration? It’s a good idea to take a peek at how other successful businesses handle their favicons.
“A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people” – Will Rogers
Just as all brands are different, their representative favicons are different. Below is a video that both explains favicons, and showcases favicons from 15 of globally successful business. These favicons are featured both for their unique nature and because of the way they needed to adapted to the small space.
In my next article you can learn how to create your own favicon for free.
Do you have a favicon for your website? I’d love to hear how you decided on the design.
Growing your small business,
David Moloney
sbp.strongerbranch.com