Use FavIcons to Improve Your Site’s Look and Traffic
Friday, November 30th, 2007The word favicon is a combination of “favorite” and “icon”. It’s a small graphic that appears in three places – in your web browser address bar next to the URL, in the tab for the particular page within your web browser, and within your list of Favorites (“Bookmarks” in Mozilla Firefox). Favicons are great, and relatively easy, additions that Prosper clients can make to their sites whether they are using a web editing program such as Dreamweaver, or sitecreatorplus.
The benefits of having a favicon are twofold. First, it gives your site a professional look. Check out some of the major websites such as Google and Amazon – they’ve got favicons. Second, a favicon highlights your site over other sites within someone’s bookmarks, and thus there’s a chance that you’ll get increased repeat visitors.
Here’s how to do a favicon (for both HTML editing programs and sitecreatorplus):
Step One
Create your favicon in an image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP. You need to make the image a perfect square, so start out with a canvas size of 30 pixels by 30 pixels, preferably with a colored canvas. I advise using a single letter in a colored box for your favicon, which can be read easily (preferably use the first letter of your domain name). For examples of single letter favicons see Google, Amazon, one of my client’s sites, Stress Management Tips, and two of my own sites – Test Preparation and Acoustic Guitars. I don’t advise using a picture or multi-letter logo because it’s hard to tell what it is. For example, check out eBay’s favicon: without getting right up next to the screen, it’s hard to tell that it’s the eBay logo. (more…)
