4 Footer Design Ideas and Best Practices
Website footer design is another another amazing thing that you should put effort in since it can benefit your website a lot. Let’s explore what website footer is, what are best practices for footer design, and footer design examples selected for you.
Our website design company provided a useful and complete guide for footer design including important components for footer, best practices, and 4 practical examples to help you design and accomplish a best footer design for your website.
In this article:
- Website footer and its benefits
- Best practices for what to include in the footer design
- 4 footer design ideas
- Final thought
Website footer and its benefits
Website footer is the bottom part of your webpage, it is at the end of each page. Mostly, the footer will stay the same throughout your website. Unlike the header, the website footer usually is the last thing that people saw since it is at the very end of the web page. However, the footer is like a safety net, it helps many visitors get to where they wanted to be but could not find them on the header and other parts of the website.
Website footers allow you as a website owner to navigate the visitor and to call for actions one last time before they leave the website. Normally, Call-to-Actions and links to other pages are at the top part of the websites, still, many people tend to scroll down really fast without taking a good look at the header of the website. Which is why footer is your website’s secure team.
Moreover, footer is a great way to add links to many important pages on your website without messing up the beautiful design on the header and the body of the website. This is great for both design and functionality. Plus, linking to other pages of your website in the footer is another way to build internal links which is good for search engine optimization or SEO.
Best practices for what to include in the footer design
There are many things that you should have on the footer. Some are a must, some are optional, let’s start with the must-have.
The must-have footer elements are those that have to do with legal issues including :
Copyright
Copyright symbol with the year is important for preventing plagiarism and protecting your website from those who will copy your work.
Privacy Policy
Link to privacy policy information is important for the visitors since it will state how their information and personal data given to your website will be protected, used, and managed.
Terms of Use
This is the link to the terms of use notice that will tell the visitors the rules and guidelines for using the website as well as products or services.
Now let’s take a look at other optional elements you could have. These are the elements that will help the visitors as well as benefiting you :
Contact information
To include contact information such as address, phone number, or email address on the footer is to encourage and help the visitors find the way to contact you easily.
Logo or tagline
Logo and tagline on the footer are optional since they are most likely seen on the header and throughout the website. However, showing them one last time can be quite impactful.
Call-to-Actions
Similar to logo and tagline, one more CTAs to have the visitor sign up or subscribe works better than you think. It is like a one last reminder for the visitor before they leave. Use engaging and intriguing word choice to attract them.
Links to important and useful pages or sitemap
As we mentioned, the footer is a great place to place internal links to pages on the websites. It is useful for the visitors when you provide links to pages that they might want to visit such as, customer service, FAQs, or work with us.
You can even link to a sitemap or provide a simplified sitemap on the footer design as well.
Links to social media accounts
Like contact information, linking to your social media sites is a great way to have the visitors get in touch with you.
Portfolio or Achievements
Showing your proud achievements like award titles or successful projects is a great way to build trustworthy character for your brand for the visitors. It is like a guarantee for your products or services.
Back-to-Top button
This last element is totally optional, it is the Back-to-Top button that will take the visitors back to the header of the page. It is convenient and also helps give another chance for the visitors to read and explore your website again in case they miss some important information.
4 footer design ideas
Now, let’s look at the four footer design that we have selected for you. We have examples of practical and interesting footer designs that you could use and adapt for your own website
Justinmind’s footer
This is an example of a simple and clean footer that has all the important elements of a footer design. You can see the copyright icon, privacy policy, and terms of use at the very bottom of the footer. This footer has lots of links to pages on the website since they use the simplified sitemap, you can see that they are in columns.
They also provide links to their social media at the center of the bottom line where you could spot them right away as well. And most importantly, they have another call to action button in black that contrasts with the rest of the footer to draw the eyes of the visitors, making this footer simple yet very effective.
Think32’s footer
Think32’s footer is much narrower than Justinmind’s footer since they did not include links to any pages on their website. For websites like Think32 that have only a few pages, it is totally fine not to have secondary menus in the footer. Instead, they use this space for contact information. As you can see, they present the social media and phone numbers prominently.
They also have a Call-to-Action with email registration as well. Making it convincing and attractive to visitors’ eyes. Think32 also included their logo and tagline on the footer as well. Lastly, no matter how innovative they are, they need to have the 3 must-have elements which are placed at the bottom of the footer design.
StackSocial’s footer
StackSocial has a footer design that is like the combination of Justinmind and Think32. They use lots of space for email subscription registration with Call-to-Action and they provide many links to pages of the website with simplified sitemaps. Notice that the have all the required elements, copyright at the bottom and privacy policy and terms of use under the Support column.
They might not have social media and contact information listed, but they provide a link to the contact page instead. They also have a Back-to-Top button for the visitors to go back and find the wanted information at the header as well.
Sephora’s footer
Sephora is a big company and their websites have many pages since they have to meet the needs of their customers. You can see that Sephora’s footer is bigger than the other three. This is because they provide links to many important pages that will help their visitors and customers find what they are looking for. The region and language choice is provided here at the footer as well, since they are a worldwide company.
At the top part of the footer, you will see the contact information such as the store location finder, ways to contact the customer service team, and how to get the application. And at the bottom, you will find all the must have elements along with social media icons linking to their sites.
Sephora also uses tagline and space below the tagline to draw attention to the email registration as well, a very clever way to use Call-to-Action.
Final thought
We take you to explore the benefits of the footer, best practice to design them, and 4 useful examples to learn from. Remember that the footer design that suits your website the most is the one that suits your brand and audience needs the most. Think about what is best for the site visitors and you will know exactly what you need for your footer design. Learn from the example and make it yours. Lastly, do not forget to make it go along well with the rest of the page.