Why bother with a favicon?

Shopbuilder Mat — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:10:42 +0000

Sixteen pixels squared is a tiny amount of screen space given today’s large screen resolutions, yet a well designed favicon can pack a punch in that small area. For anyone not familiar with favicons, they are the small 16×16 pixel images that sit in browser address bars, as demonstrated in the subtle image to the right.

As new browser versions are released new uses are found for the humble favicon. Where they were once relegated to just the address bar you will now see them popping up all over your screen. Arguably the most useful implementations appear in the users favourites and browser history.

Why use a favicon?

Firstly, because they are so easy to set-up. 5 minutes is more than enough to set-up a favicon for your store and if it helps bring 1 customer ever than still isn’t a bad investment in time.
If you don’t have a favicon then it will log as a 404 error every time one is requested, so adding one will actually save resources (albeit a tiny amount)
Your site will stand out in people’s favourites – reminding them about your store every time they see it. This works particularly well if your competitors don’t have one.
A well designed favicon can help reinforce your brand identity and help it stick in your users mind. Don’t believe that such a small image can do this? Try our little quiz below.
Your site will stand out more when users are using tabbed browsing. Customers comparing stores in multiple tabs will see yours stand.
It’ll stand out in the browser history as well, helping customers find you again after they visit.
Some users save shortcuts to pages rather than using favourites and the favicon is used for these as well. Consider a 32×32 icons for best results in this situation.

Quiz: The Famous Fav

Time to test your favicon recognition skills. To the right are the favicons of 18 quite well known websites. I suspect that most readers will recognise most of them. Despite being only 16×16 pixels these companies have all managed to portray their brands effectively.

How to add a favicon

By far the easiest way to add a favicon is to use a generator such as Favicon.co.uk . Just upload an image file and they will resize and rename it for you. Upload that to the document root of your site and you are good to go.

A disclaimer

Adding a favicon to your site won’t get the same sort of results as some of the other issues discussed on Shopbuild, however it has to be one of the fastest fixes you can apply. If you don’t have one already why not add one in your lunch break today and finish the week with the satisfaction of getting one extra little job done?

Quiz answers

Working from top left to bottom right, the sites are: Amazon, Google, Play, B&Q, BBC, Blogger, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Yahoo, Facebook, Argos, Ebay, Dell, Apple, Youtube, Wikipedia, Twitter and Bing.