What icons to choose for your website

When it comes to choosing the right icons you may want to check with your visitors first.

There’s a convention, and everyone recognizes (at least let’s hope that your target does, otherwise you should find another target) the standard icons.

Most frequently, in addition to the list of icons above, you’ll need to design your custom icons. Before you do that you can do two things to make sure they help your users

1. Create a table with 2 columns

On one column you draw the icons and on the other you let some write what they think the icon means. To get better results you should put in the table various representations of the same concept. You’ll see from their answers what works better

2. Let them draw

You invert the process above. You tell them the concept and you let them draw the object. Even though not all of us have been blessed with artistic talents, the mock-ups can be a good starting point when you are out of ideas

3. Don’t overuse them

The icons should guide the user through the concepts not confuse him. Be careful not to fall in the other extreme

Example:rentacoder.com

The people at rentacoder should rent an UI expert