Standard icons list for your website

To give a clear meaning and purpose to your website information, icons are a good option. They are more than decoration if you use them wisely

I tried to find a list with all the standard icons on the web but I couldn’t find a more recent one, nor something very comprehensive. Here’s the collection I gathered from various resources:

Shopping cart

Even though it’s not a well defined shape, this icon with a shopping cart is to be found on almost every e-commerce site. Amazon has it. In US, in Asia, everywhere, the shopping cart is represented with the same icon

Home

You recognize the graphic, it’s the shape of the house that even a 4 year old can reproduce. It’s the icon that takes you back to the home page of the site. In the new new web emerging there’s less and less of that as users are used to clicking the logo to get that effect

Alert

If you want to emphasize that’s something should be paid attention to, or that something went wrong, use this. It’s the international icon for alert. It was first seen in the Windows operation system. Very often as I recall

Search

When visitors scan for search this icon will help expediate the process and have them convert into the desired action

Zoom

Zoom in, zoom out. These icons you see them most frequently on e-commmerce sites. They are very useful when you are about to buy a product but you want to make sure that the details are exactly how you expect them to be. I call them the “no surprises lens”

Questions, help

The question mark stands for either enquiries or help and it’s best known from the Windows screens

Information

Clicking on it will reveal more information. In form of a new page or just an informative balloon

Print

It’s difficult to read on your computer large amount of text.That’s why the printer icon comes in handy. Even though I would say go green, don’t print unless very necessary, sites often make use of this icon

E-mail

There’s no question that the little envelope icon represents the “mail to” feature. It’s mainly used for viral purposes such as “email this article to a friend”

RSS feeds

This icon is to be found in many fancy graphical representations. That’s because bloggers love them. We all know why

Users

Forums, chat, discussion, user log in space are represented by various representations of the human upper body

Pictures

It’s sometimes used to represent picture files or pages with pictures

Settings

This icon is seen less frequenton the web. It represents the settings page. And mostly used in hosted software applications

Delete, trash

Most frequent in shopping baskets. In case you change your mind when you see the total you can get rid of some items

Media player controls

They have been imported from the classical player. And they will be understood by everyone, including people who are not into computers

Sound

Every youtube movie has it. It lets you control the sound of some movies without direct control over the computer’s settings

Keep in mind that there’s no strict standard in the icons world, just conventions. If I missed any icon do let me know so I can update my post

*Icons from istockphotos.com