Web Site Icons

An icon is a small picture or symbol that represents an object or a function within a software application. An icon can also be used to launch a program. Clicking on it typically activates an icon.

Website icons can be used to take the user to a particular page on the website. For instance, a lot of websites use a picture of a house to symbolize the path back to the site's homepage. Others use images of a country's flag to take the visitor to the English, German, French, Japanese, or Spanish versions of a site.

Website icons can also be used to give the computer instruction on what operations you want to perform. A popular example of this functionality, is allowing the user to click on the mailbox icon to send an email message to the administrator of the site. Using a picture of a shopping cart, to allow users to view all the items they added to their cart while browsing an online store is another example.

Favicon Options

Customized website icons can also be placed in the address bar or favorites list of your browser. This is accomplished by including the path to an icon file called a favicon.ico in the root directory of your domain. The favicon icon that is most often used is the company's logo or some other image that is representative of the site.