Get a Custom Icon on Your Browser Address Bar!

Internet marketing in a busy niche requires you create a unique brand, or identity, so your readers remember you, and will come back to visit your sites. Taking a little extra time to customize little details, can help your site stand apart from the others. Have you noticed when you visit or bookmark some websites, you get a custom icon in your browser address bar, bookmarks or favorites? This special little icon is called a FavIcon, short for Favorite Icon. It is one of the small things you can do, to make your site stand apart from the others, and is very simple to create and use.

I have not noticed a great increase in traffic using FavIcons, but I have noticed the percentage of visitors returning to my site from Favorites and Bookmarks goes up, when I add a FavIcon. It varies between sites, but even a small percentage change in repeat visitors can increase your profits. Returning visitors buy more consistently and usually higher dollar items than new readers. Taking a few extra steps to increase your repeat visitors, and help them identify your site in their bookmarks is a good investment of your time.

Creating a FavIcon, is very simple if you use the right tools. Here’s the way I do it:

One of the example, you can visit/use this site to generate a FavIcon. (http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/)
Click “Browse” button, choose an image file to be your FavIcon and click “Generate FavIcon.ico” button.
To customize the way your FavIcon looks, click “Customize” and define your setting. Once you are ready, click “OK” on the setting and click “Download FavIcon Package” to download the FavIcon
Open the FavIcon package, upload favicon.ico and animated_favicon1.gif to your web site root folder. These files are in the favicon package you’ve downloaded.
Add following HTML tags to your web page after the <head> tag but before the </head> tag:<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”>
<link rel=”icon” type=”image/gif” href=”animated_favicon1.gif”>
Kudos! Your FavIcon is ready and should be displayed on your browser address bar.

The one catch to a FavIcon is getting it installed properly on your website or blog. If you don’t install it properly it will not appear. To add it to your site follow these instructions:

Taking these few minutes to create a FavIcon, to use in branding your site, can pay off in increased return visitors, which results in more income for your online business.

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