Website Design - Do Not Neglect the Footer

To begin with, let's look at two tips for making your footers more visually attractive.

"A picture is worth a 1000 words" - this old adage applies to footers as well as to the rest of your website. Use carefully chosen pictures to give the reader an idea as to the type of services you offer.

For example, in our own Web Design and Redesign businesss, we give a selection of websites that we have designed at the top of the footer section (one of these websites just might be of a style that catches the reader's eye).

The tonicfusion.com site does a similar thing in a striking, asymmetrical way:

 Other sites - like this Ipswich Letting Property site - have a list of properties owned by the company running across the top of the footer:

Whichever layout you choose, using footer images to show an additional selection of products or services helps to improve the visual appeal of your website as well as tempting the viewer with a visual display of products/services that you did not have space to show in the header.

Maintain a cohesive feel to your website by following through design elements found elsewhere. At a minimum, echo colours and font and little design details such as rounded corners or image borders.

In this Knowsley Safari Experience website (knowsleysafariexperience.co.uk), the wavy background of the footer menu options echoes the wavy lines found elsewhere on the page.

Sometimes, you can use some creativity in getting your message across. For example, in this driving instructor website (drivinglessonsburystedmunds.co.uk), the website header illustrates the diverse types of learner drivers who could benefit from driving lessons with the school whereas the footer illustrates the different types of driving experiences that open up once you have gained "the freedom of the road". Both follow a similar visual format:

In this cleaning company website (elitecleanteam.co.uk), the header photos rotate behind a central watersplash; in the footer, this water splash is stretched to form the top frame for images depicting the type of cleaning services offered (see section 1 above). Note how the different text sections of the footer are visually separated by using different levels of background opacity.

Next, let's look at some functions that modern website footers can serve.

One function of a footer is to make a "call for action" and to give the appropriate contact details. Some companies give a small Google map, a link to such a Google map or a photo of their offices.

This global7casting.com website shows how a minimal design can be very effective. Note that, in this design, the black background ot the Tel/Fax and Mob boxes serves as a simple but effective visual.

Other websites mix this call for action with reassuring words, as is the case with this wjnpropertymaintenance.co.uk website:

The footer can be an ideal place to add testimonials and/or companies who use your services. If your coding skills permit, use different testimonials on each page or use rotating testimonials.

The testimonial given on rflandscapes.co.uk is different on each page - together with the attractive visuals, this helps to end each page with a "feel good" factor.

This website by pallasweb.com combines a rotating list of the "great companies we've worked with" on the left with an inspirational "let your imagination soar with a website from us" message on the right.

Many websites put social media share/tweet buttons prominently at the top or side and there are reports that such prominent placing increases the effectiveness. The footer can, however, be used to put buttons linking to the company's Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin pages (as opposed to buttons asking the user to share the page onto their own Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin page) or simply to repeat the buttons for those who read first and then click.

This bluefountainmedia.com site shows how modern footers can give prominent and attractively presented social media buttons. (It also shows a prominent "call to action" and good use of a google map alongside the address.)

The footer is an ideal place to list your professional membership and/or accreditations and/or awards won.

This routeoneschoolofmotoring.co.uk website puts these professional memberships into a semi-opaque box overlaying a wide-screen road background that mirrors that of the header.

Putting keywords into the footer is nowhere near as effective as putting keywords higher up on the page - after all, if you were a search engine, would you take more notice of a page that used keywords prominently at the top of the page for all to see or of one that tucked these keywords away in small font at the bottom? The footer can, however, be used to "top up" keywords found elsewhere on the page. It can also sometimes be - a bit - helpful in finding very non-competitive terms that you do not want to be included in the main text.

For this burroughsprintfinishing.co.uk website, we gave common mis-spellings of the company name tucked away in the footer so that people could find them by these mis-spellings if they searched for them in Google. We also put the main website keywords into a table that gives human visitors a useful checklist and that gives some extra keywords for search engines.

Another use that the footer has in SEO terms is to display the last page of your blog or to display some changeable information that you don't want to clutter up the main text with. This is because it is believed that search engines give some preference to sites that update their content frequently.

In contrast to websites of a few years back that simply re-listed the main footer menu options in a horizontal line, modern-day footers allow themselves the space to set out these menu options in ways that assist the reader.

As this cybernautic.com website shows, footers are also an ideal place to link to menu options that you do not necessarily want to clutter up your top menu section - for example, the website pages targetting each individual town/city/state that the company is targetting.