For those of you that don’t know what a favicon is, it’s that tiny little image the shows up in your browser’s tabs. It’s usually the logo of the website you’re looking at and helps you to keep track of all your open tabs. While some see a favicon as the least important part of a website, the devil is in the details; and your clients and users will thank you for it.
What is a Favicon?
A favicon is the small square image (usually 16×16 pixels in size) which is used by web browsers to display a graphical representation of the website you’re on. You will have definitely seen them before, even if you haven’t really taken notice.
The name is a combination of ‘favourite’ and ‘icon’, it came to life in March of 1999, when Internet Explorer 5 first supported the use of favicons.
In the early days of the internet, Google Analytics and other tracking software didn’t exist of course, so favicons were used to estimate website traffic by counting the number of visitors who’d bookmarked a page. Now, however, the main purpose of a favicon is to improve user experience.
Why have one?
While not used as a ranking factor by Google, they’re still a really important tool for branding. A website without a favicon just shows a generic browser symbol.
The attention is in the details, it will make your website more professional and help to improve both your branding and the users experience while browsing your website. While, favicons are not currently used on most mobile browsers, it’s still an easy and important thing to add to your desktop site.
How to create a Favicon
Creating a favicon is easy, the tricky part is getting it onto the website. There are lots of favicon generating tools out there to help you, but enlist the help of your web developer to make sure it’s added correctly to the root folder of your website.
In conclusion, favicons are one of those little things that we don’t pay much attention to but they play an important role in both the user experience on your site and your company’s branding. So make sure you pay attention to the details, if you don’t already have one, add one to your website.