A Logo With the Business Name in It

The name that is not text

Almost every small business site puts its name at the top as part of a logo image.

Which means the name of the business is a picture rather than words, on every page.

Anything that cannot see pictures gets nothing, unless the image has been given a description.

It is the single most repeated image on the site and it takes one edit to fix everywhere.

What it should say

• The business name, exactly.
• Nothing about the design.
• Not the word logo.
• Not a description of the shapes.
• Including any tagline shown in the image.

The last is the one people miss. If the logo image includes the words roofing and gutters since 1998, those words are content and should be in the description rather than lost.

Why not the word logo

Since it feels like the natural thing to write.

A screen reader already announces that the element is an image, so a description beginning with logo produces image, logo, which is one word of noise before the useful part.

Somebody listening wants to know whose site they are on, and the name alone answers that.

The same applies to describing the design: a blue hexagon with a hammer tells nobody anything they need.

Write the name and stop, which is the whole rule.

This is one of the very few cases in this subject where the answer is genuinely that simple.

When it links to the home page

Which it usually does, and which changes things slightly.

The logo in a header is normally a link back to the home page, so the image description becomes the name of that link.

Somebody hears link, and then whatever the description says.

The business name alone is acceptable and widely used, since a name in a header is conventionally understood as the way home.

Adding home makes it explicit and is slightly better: the name followed by the word home reads clearly and removes the guess.

Either is fine, and both are considerably better than nothing or than the word logo.

A worked example

A business had a logo image with no description at all on every page.

Listening to the site, each page began with the file name of the logo file read aloud, which was a string of numbers from the design software.

The business name appeared nowhere in text on the home page, since the header was the only place it was shown.

Adding the name as the description took two minutes in the template.

That single edit resolved a failure reported on all thirty-one pages and made the site identifiable to anybody listening to it.

It was also the only place their own name appeared as text anywhere on the site.

Put the name in text somewhere

Which is the wider point this reveals.

A site where the business name exists only inside an image is missing its own name as far as anything reading the page is concerned.

The footer is the natural place: the name, the address, and the telephone number as ordinary text.

That helps search, helps anybody copying your details, and means the name is not dependent on one image loading.

Most sites have this already and a surprising number do not.

The favicon and the social image too

Since the logo appears in more places than the header.

The small icon in the browser tab, the image used when somebody shares a link, and any version in the footer.

None of those needs a description in the same way, and all of them should be checked while you are in there.

A share image with the name baked in is fine, since the surrounding link text carries the name separately.

Make the sweep once rather than returning to this three times.

Check it in the template, not the page

Which is where the edit belongs.

The header appears on every page, so the description should be set once in whatever produces the header.

Editing it page by page means it will be inconsistent within a year and wrong on anything added later.

Ask whoever maintains the site to set it in the template if you cannot reach it yourself, which is a two-minute request.

Then confirm on three different pages, including one built outside the usual template.

That last one is where an old header with the original untouched logo tends to survive.

Do the same for the header telephone number

Which is the other thing frequently trapped in an image at the top of a page.

A designer given a header layout will sometimes render the telephone number as part of a graphic so the typography matches, and it then cannot be tapped, copied, or read aloud.

That costs actual work, since the number in the header is what somebody uses when they have decided to call.

Make it real text, make it a tappable link, and let it look slightly different from the rest of the header if it must.

Check the same thing on any page built outside the template, where an older header may still be in use.

The counter-case

This is a very small fix.

It resolves one failure repeated across every page, which flatters the count without changing much about how usable the site is.

Somebody who reached your site already knows roughly who you are, so the practical benefit is smaller than the reported numbers suggest.

And a site that already shows the name in text beside the logo has no problem here at all, which some do.

Set the description to the business name in the template, add home if it links there, and put the name in text in the footer.

The two minutes

1. Find the logo in the template.
2. Set the description to the name.
3. Include any tagline in the image.
4. Add home if it links there.
5. Remove the word logo.
6. Check three pages.
7. Put the name in text in the footer.

Step seven is the one worth doing beyond the fix itself, since a business whose name exists only inside an image has no name at all as far as a machine is concerned.

The other logo problem is covered in the logo nobody can read at thumbnail size.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.