Favicons As Advertising, Done Right
Although everything you’ve ever read about favicons is pretty basic, some of the largest websites violate these simple favicon rules:
- Create an icon based upon your logo
- Name it “favicon.ico”
- Park your favicon in your website’s root directory.
Pretty simple, right? Yet you or your web developer unknowingly may be costing you missed sales and promotion opportunities from some of the newest ways consumers can search or access websites.
Screens Are Getting Smaller
The truth is that while flat panel computer screens are getting larger, mobile Internet devices are getting smaller. And with the small mobile devices, gone are the days of twenty 150-character website hyperlinks being displayed on a screen. Suddenly, with the onslaught of these small mobile devices and with their miniature display screens, there is much less room to display links to your website.
But even online, one company, IconDrive.com (http://www.icondrive.com), is counting on you to name your favicon “favicon” and park your favicon in the root directory of your server. IconDrive.com has created its iWebGPS Navigation service as a new way for computer users, and soon mobile device users, to access and search your site… And it only uses your favicon to provide the link to search or access your site, displaying nearly 70 website links on a miniature screen.
Favicons Done Right
In the most simple terms, the favicon of your website is like a logo on your company car or delivery van. Displaying your logo on your company vehicle will expose consumers to your business as you drive your company car around the city. This exposure is designed to help increase the likelihood that some of these consumers will see that same logo on your store or office sign and decide to stop and do business with you.
But the logo-based favicon is the only part that the big guys get right.
Favicons Done Wrong
Where they go wrong is the odd naming and parking of the favicon. It’s not so much the companies that make the two mistakes, but their irrational web developers. I’ve seen large companies with favicons given all kinds of mysterious, encrypted, coded names that are placed deep within folders. Worse of all, some of these web developers connect the favicons to session ID numbers, which expire at the end of a user session – along with the favicon.
The biggest problem I find with the utilization of favicons is that large corporate sites that should have favicons, don’t. And many large corporate sites that do have a favicon bury them deep into folders and irregularly named. Here are a couple examples:
PayPal’s favicon is located deep within folders and irregularly named…
http://www.paypalobjects.com/WEBSCR-580-20090611-1/en_US/i/icon/pp_favicon_x.ico
PremierCard has a favicon for one site…
http://www.premierclassic.com (http://www.premierclassic.com/favicon.ico)
…. but not for the other…
http://www.mypremiercreditcard.com
Then, many medium and smaller sites just don’t understand that favicons are like a business logo on a business card or outdoor sign. Done right, favicons provide quick identification of a business’ website. And only with a favicon can your web site be included in services like IconDrive.com’s iWebGPS service.
Keep It Simple
So if you wouldn’t hide your store or office deep in some crunchy dark alley, don’t hide your favicon. Keep it simple and remember that in business, location is everything. It will help make sure that services like IconDrive’s iWebGPS Navigation service can find your favicon to display it to the world and make your site a favicon-click away.
June 25th, 2009
great post! this is something that i haven’t used on my previous web sites! only done close to 10 sites. but its something i will definitely be using from now on!