A Complete Guide To Website Footer Design

Footer design is an important section for website visitors. We'll show you a guide on how to create a great footer layout for your website

By Claudio Pires
Updated on June 10, 2023
A Complete Guide To Website Footer Design

Although often overlooked, the footer is still a key website element. This is vital for website visitors seeking more information about your business. Footer design is an essential section for website visitors. We’ll show you a guide on how to create an excellent footer layout for your website.

When designing a footer for your website, you face the challenge of defining the elements to include while keeping in mind that a perfectly optimized footer design will facilitate navigation while helping you achieve your business goals.

It is not 100% necessary for your website to have a footer area. However, not using one may make finding specific information about your website or business frustratingly challenging for some website visitors.

For instance, the footer section is ideal for placing your copyright info and important links to essential pages of your website, such as your about page, contact page, terms and conditions page, privacy policy page, disclaimer page, Cookie notifications page, etc.

During a usability test, UserTesting found that placing their conversion goals in the footer section helped them increase their conversion rate by 50% over two weeks. SmartInsights also reported that they saw a near 24% growth in their sales conversion rate simply by optimizing their website footer.

Now. I want to share in this guide the website footer layout that I found and liked. This is to help inspire you when you create your footer design. Web studio SparkBox uses a full-width card-style interface footer design, which is simple but very attractive. Their footer area displays contact information, navigational links, and social media profile links.

Bristol Archive Record’s

Which consists of a graphic background image of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Their footer section provides three widget areas with links to important pages, copyright info, and authority logos for the websites and profiles they use. Great, that’s enough inspiration for you. Let’s look at 16 things to consider including in your footer design. Let’s start with what I believe to be the essential items:

Zoyo yogurt’s

The website footer is another one that I liked the look of. Their footer design includes contact information, navigational links, and a simple but attractive email contact form.

GiftRocket’s

The beautiful footer area comprises a pre-footer area for showing off testimonials from reputable brands and a main footer area that contains all of the essential navigational links to other pages on their site.

The website footer displays a pre-footer section with a conversion goal (getting people to signup for a service trial), followed by a main footer area with a list of recently published blog articles, navigational links, conversion links, and links to help and support pages, privacy and policy pages.

Copyright info – Make it clear that the content of your website is protected and copyrighted and that plagiarism is prohibited! Copyright info should ideally be placed in a sub-footer.

Testimonials – This is optional; however, I believe it’s essential for online businesses to link to their feedback submission page or testimonial page. Assuming you have one, of course.

Google Map – If your website is the online portal for your brick-and-mortar business, perhaps you run a guest house, restaurant, or local events center – Then, consider adding some location information to your footer. This could be a simple address, postcode, or a local Google Map integration.

Secondary Navigation – Add links to your About page, FAQ page, and other important site pages to assist your website users.

Contact Info & Terms

Contact Information – Most people search the footer section to find contact information.

You must add yours to your footer, especially if you still need to include a link to your contact page in the main navigation, where most websites will have theirs. Your contact information can be a mailing address, telephone number, and email address.

Privacy Policy – With online privacy laws getting stricter, displaying a link to your privacy policy page is essential.

Terms of Service – If, like myself and many others, you provide a service through your website or run an e-commerce website, the last thing you want is for your customers/clients to become confused about the terms of doing business with you. Ensure you display a link to your terms of service page in your footer.

List of latest blog posts – You may want to add a feed to your latest blog posts in your website’s footer, or an even better strategy would be to link to just a few of the best and most popular blog posts. My advice to you would be to keep this minimal, though. Four or five links should be more than enough.

Contact Form – If you don’t wish to place your contact information on display in your footer, especially your email address.

Consider adding a simple contact form instead to reduce the risk of receiving email spam. Using a form in the footer area of your website can help make it easier for your users to contact you from practically any page on your website. Remember, however, a form can take up considerable footer space.

Mission Statement – If you want to show your visitors what your website or brand stands for, your goals, aspirations, etc. Consider adding a short version of your mission statement in your footer. If you have an extended version of your MS, you could always add a link to it.

Bio – If your website is a personal brand site or blog, you could also add a short bio about yourself, including a photo to help add some human element to your website. You can then add a link to your About page that visitors can click on to learn more.

CTA – Do you have sales pages, best-selling product pages, or affiliate pages that you want to promote further? How about linking to them in your footer anchor text?

Social Proof & Follow Us Icons – If you want to show off your social media influence or get people to follow you on your most active social networks, consider adding some social profiles and perhaps the number of subscribers/followers you have for each shape in the footer for social proof. You could even create a pre-footer area for these, like the one below!

Email Opt-in Form – A great way to boost your email opt-in conversion is to display a simple signup form. Alternatively, if a signup form is too much to add to your footer. Consider a simple call-to-action button or link to your main lead generation page.

Site Map – A Site Map helps search engines better understand the structure of your website and content. Many websites will choose to have a link to their SiteMap besides their copyright info in a sub-footer.

Social Sharing Tools – Social sharing buttons can also be placed in the footer. It makes it easier for visitors to share your page with their social media friends and followers.

Great, so what about items that should be outside your website footer? Let’s take a look: Page view counters and traffic stats widgets. Direct affiliate links. Embedded social media feeds. Advertisements. It depends on what platform you’re using to build your website. For WordPress users, for instance, there are several premium quality footer plugins you could try out.

Some websites use different footers on their pages to meet their conversion goals. Some website owners prefer only to use a footer section on the homepage. Great. So you’ve read enough of how I feel about optimizing your website’s footer design. Now let’s ask a few other experts what they think.

Andrew Lowen – “The footer area of a website should help website visitors navigate the website. We like including important links (such as most/all menu items), contact information, and copyright info.

Mistakes in the footer are adding social media feeds or “join our newsletter” forms. When a user looks at the footer, they aren’t interested in your social media… they missed what they were looking for in the main body of your website!

You will only get potential conversions if you navigate them to someplace closer to what they were looking for. People don’t go to the footer on purpose. They go there because their scroll action led them there by accident, often due to their need for more attention to detail. Your footer should help them find what they need!”.

Ashley Faulkes – “I use the footer for a few key things that are often difficult to find. The company details (name, address, phone, etc). List important pages that are either not in the main header or deserve repetition. (shipping, privacy, terms and conditions, about the company, etc.).

Lastly, an important call to action: Further ways to get in touch, an email opt-in (newsletter). A booking button, donate button, etc. Yes, the footer is often forgotten and under-utilized, but it can be a very useful place.”

Concluding About Website Footer Layout Guide

Contact information is a popular one. Most people expect to find contact details in the footer. Other than improving the navigational flow of a website and user experience, strategizing a website’s footer design has been proven to impact conversions for some brands and businesses. It could be for you too.

We hope this article on footer design is an important section for website visitors and that the tips shown in this article with a guide on how to design your website footer layout has helped you

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.