So many sites these days have beautiful headers, amazing graphics and top notch artwork, but some completely neglect the quality, visuality and more importantly, the functionality of there site footer. So in this item I am going to hit on certain points I feel everyone should include on a web site footer.

Design

Unless it really compliments your website to have a minimalistic footer, put some thought and design into it, remember when a visitor comes to your site and scrolls down, your footer maybe the last thing they see before leaving your site, make it something to remember. Now I am not for one second suggesting that people should compromise the integrity of their website just to throw in some funky graphics on a footer, if it is going to look bad, don’t do it!

Logo or Branding

I feel it is always a good idea to have some form of logo or branding incorporated on your footer. This like on this site can be used as a ‘home button’ or perhaps a ‘back to top’ or it could simply add some simple visual impact to your footer if you are keeping it low key on the design front.

Important Links

It is a very good idea to have important links on your footer, say your home button, contact etc. This is not only to improve traffic, but also to stop people laboriously having to scroll right to the top of your site to click on the home button, especially after scrolling right the way down a 7ft long rant about quality web design footers!

Back to Top Buttons

Back to the top buttons don’t always have to be simple text links. They can be incorporated into your design and sometimes improve it if done correctly. Another nice link to have is ‘Back to Start’ or ‘Back to Content’ where it wont take you back to the header of the page but back to the start of the article you have been reading, maybe if it spanned over 4 or 5 pages, it would save finding the base link, messing with the URL or having to return home to link up again.

You may also like to include page links if you are scrolling through archives of blogs. I have the opposite issue on this point with Google who have decided to add their page navigation to the footer of the search but not the header.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Google and am very impressed at how they are developing the SE, but it is rather annoying that on my monitor you have to scroll have an inch down on an image search to reach the page navigation!

Summary’s & Important Info

Your footer can also include a summary of your page, a few lists of latest news and events or even recent comments on blogs you have written. People do tend to hang around a page footer longer than you think! Even if it is just to stop and register what they have just been reading, they always pause and scan, even just for a few seconds. Within this few seconds the brain can take in a lot of information, if its there! It could be the difference between a visitor to your site clicking on something new or leaving your site for good.

Conclusion:

Well it may of seemed like a small rant, but I hope I have expressed some useful information in this topic. I conclude that it is all well and good having a beautiful header as a ‘welcome to my site, look what I can do’ statement, but show the user that once they have spent there good time reading what you have to say, you didn’t just forget about them with a cold hard 1px horizontal hr tag and some copyright bumf! Give something back to your readers with a lovely warm page footer.