Many people these days have favorite sites that they bookmark, so that they can find the site easier at a later time. When you bookmark a website, in most cases, it places an icon with the site name into your toolbar, or favorite section of your browser. This icon can be very helpful. It helps identify the bookmarked website, without having to read the name of the site.

These little icons are called "favIcons". A favicon is a 16px (pixel) X 16px graphic image, that is used primarily to identify a website. Not only are they helpful with bookmarking your favorite sites, its great for branding. Every business that has a website, should have a favicon. It adds a tiny touch of professionalism, and it adds a higher level of usability to those that visit your site. Most favicons are a miniature representation of a companies logo. When promoting a brand this is very useful. Visitor and customers will identify your business website by the favicon. Websites without favicons could be viewed unprofessional, or unreliable. Due to the vast people bookmarking sites, many are used to seeing a favicon. Not seeing one on a website, could raise some trust issues with the site. On a good note there is a default favicon that looks like a sheet of paper with a page curl, and people who are not familiar with this as a default favicon, may not give it a second thought. On the other hand, most people are very familiar with browsing the internet and more than likely will identify the default favicon as just that.

Dont take any chances. Add that tiny touch of professionalism, by adding a favicon to your website. You will promote your brand, ensure professionalism, and optimal usability. If you do not know how to create a favicon, their are many ways you can do this. Any graphic designer should be able to create one for you fairly cheap. Alternatively, if you have an image that you want to use, make sure it is the right size, and remember that too much detail will not render well when resized to 16px X 16px. Next there are several sites that will generate the icon for you such as....DYNAMIC DRIVE.

Once you generate your icon, you need to upload it to your websites root directory. Then you will need to paste the following code to your HEAD section of your HTML pages. Look for </head> and paste the following code right after it.

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico">

That's it, you may have to clear your browsers cache to view it, but it will show up!

Good luck!