A WordPress favicon can represent websites on numerous platforms. It is a small icon that appears next to the website’s name, history, and titles in the browser tab. However, the WordPress favicon can also be used in browser bookmarks, iOS home screen buttons, etc.
Despite its small size, it is important in helping users identify your site and is a significant part of your branding. When used in a proper manner, your site’s favicon or small icon can effectively help users easily identify and navigate your business. In this way, it can help boost brand recognition and enhance the site’s User Experience.
In this article, we will explain the benefits of using a favicon on a WordPress site, discuss how to create one, and walk you through the options for adding it to your WordPress site. This article also intends to provide you with some best tips and practices for using a favicon for your website.
Why Is It Important To Add A Favicon To Your Site?
A favicon is considered any WordPress site’s identity, helping people recognize it. Though the icon image is small, still, it can greatly impact the user experience and your brand reputation.
Here are some reasons why a favicon in a WordPress site is important:
1. Enhance The User Experience
Many users open multiple tabs simultaneously in their browsers. A favicon beside the site title can certainly help users easily distinguish each tab and identify your site.
Improve Visibility
If set up precisely, the favicon will appear next to a WordPress website URL on the search results. This effectively helps people notice a particular site which increases its organic traffic.
Adding a favicon to a site can also enable businesses to build brand awareness: These site icons make sure to keep a particular business’s identity in front of its user’s eyes even when they are not on its site. Moreover, if your site lacks a favicon, it will appear conspicuous among its users.
2. Improve Mobile Experience
Mobile devices generally allow their users to add web pages to their home screens. Adding a website to their mobile device home screen will display the favicon, allowing users to locate a specific site among many app icons.
3. Helps Build Trust
The more customers see a website’s favicon, the more likely they will remember it. WordPress favicons effectively help a website look more professional. In this way, these small icons help build trust between website owners and their consumers. On the other hand, if a website does not have this icon, the web browser will use a default one, which will make the website appear unattended or incomplete.
How To Create A WordPress Favicon
Before creating a custom favicon file, there are several preparations to make:
You can manually create this small icon with the help of Photoshop. However, the basic cloud-based tools are way easier and allow users to create their favicon icon set from existing images. Moreover, nowadays, all advanced browsers support using PNG, ICO, and GIF files for favicons.
How To Change Favicons In WordPress
The basic three options through which you can set a favicon in WordPress typically include using a plug-in, using the WordPress Customizer or creating it manually.
Here are a few steps that will guide you in adding and changing your site’s favicons:
1. Open The Customizer
Firstly, go to the WordPress dashboard, click on the tab “Appearance,” and then open the Customizer.
2. Open “Site Identity”
After the WordPress Customizer has opened, click on “Site Identity.”
3. Click On “Select Site Icon”
In this section, users can set the tagline and title of their WordPress site. After that, click on the “Site icon” and select a particular icon in order to set the favicon in WordPress.
4. Select Your Favicon
Next, open the WordPress media library. If you have already uploaded this icon to WordPress, you can just select it. Otherwise, click “Upload Files” and browse the file from the folders. Then confirm your selection by clicking on the “Select” button.
5. Crop Your Favicon
Once you have selected the image, you will now have the chance to crop it. Once you have finished cropping, confirm your selection by clicking “Crop Image.” If your image is already of the correct size, then you can skip the cropping section.
FAQs:
1. What Happens If Your Website Does Not Have A Favicon?
Browsers usually display a gray icon if any website does not have a favicon. This makes a site look unfinished and can undermine people’s trust. Therefore, the first impression holds great significance, and the lack of a favicon can show that the site owner has not paid attention to small details.
2. Does Favicon Increase SEO?
SEO is all about marketing and branding, and the more visible a website is, the more users are likely to click on it. A favicon is a visual representation of websites and businesses, and users identify a particular WordPress site based on its favicon. That’s why a site having an appealing favicon will certainly have better SEO.
Therefore, people from the SEO sphere advise adding a favicon to a WordPress site in order to improve its overall SEO.
