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LNCtips.com: Favicon Marketing

Some of the most well-known legal nurse consultants have them on their websites. I have one on my website too.  Social media, some small businesses and organizations, and all of the large retailers, from Wal-Mart to Macy's, also have them.  But only a handful of new and experienced LNCs have them on their websites.  And that's too bad, because these little symbols are a subtle but powerful way to market an LNC's unique brand.  What are they?  Favicons.

Favicon is short for "favorites icon."  It's a tiny image that displays in the address bar, favorites, bookmarks, and/or tabs in browsers.  Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Opera are a few of the browsers that display favicons.  In a tabbed browser, favicons look like this:

tabbed icons

Do the favicons above look familiar?  Target, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all use favicons because they provide instant brand recognition. If the user wants to leave Target's site to go to Facebook's, the favicon acts like a beacon of light drawing the user to the tab for Facebook's website.  That's the power of brand recognition.

Now let's view a group of tabs for legal nurse consultants.  I looked at some LNC websites listed on AALNC's LNC Locator as seen below.

LNC tabs

The favicon for my website is easy to distinguish from the websites of LNCS who don't use favicons.  In fact, you can't tell whose websites the tabs belong to, because all of those tabs are white.  There's no "beacon" beckoning the user to return to those sites.

Favicons are easy and free to create, but they take a little finesse to get them on your website.  You'll need to access your logo, photo, or other image in GIF, JPEG, or PNG format from your computer.  Go to Favicon Generator and upload your image.  Click "Create Favicon" and it generates a standard sized 16x16-pixel image.  You may need to experiment to get a favicon you like.  My highlighter logo was an indistinct blob so I opted to use the highlighter color as a background and the font from my logo.  Once you have a favicon that you like, download and save it to your computer by clicking on the link provided. 

The only slightly tricky part of adding a favicon to your website is getting the accompanying HTML code into your site.  It's the HTML code that displays the favicon on your website. If you hired a firm to create your website, contact your webmaster.  If you used a build-it-yourself website, go to the Help section of your website builder and type in the word "Favicon."  For example, if you built your site using GoDaddy, it has easy instructions to upload your favicon to your website.  If you have a WordPress blog, you can use All in One Favicon to upload your favicon into your WordPress site.  Google Blogger has similar instructions for adding your favicon to your Blogger blog. 

Are favicons an absolute necessity? Of course not.  However, I think you'll agree that favicons add a subtle but noticeable boost to a website's brand. And now that you know what a favicon is, you'll scrutinize every website you visit to see if it has one. 

...Katy Jones