The footer on your website is often the last thing your visitors are going to see. That also potentially makes it the last opportunity to keep users on your site. Often in the process of web design, a footer might be the last element to be addressed, and it’s often quite tempting to speed through it with common elements like a sitemap and copyright or legal information. While a sitemap makes sense, since it gives users the opportunity to learn how your site is organized, or give them a better idea of how to find what their looking for, it’s not very entertaining, or engaging. It might be a good practice to put less emphasis on a second navigation area for your site, and more emphasis on content the users came to your site to see in the first place.

It has become a common practice all over the web to include recommendations. “If you like this book, you might also like these!” or “If you thought that was funny, wait till you see these recommended videos!” and so on. On the web, content is king. Using your footer to recommend interesting content is a perfect way to keep users locked to your URL. Adding a little extra info about who you are and what you do can go a long way to adding personality. Illustration and sharp graphics are becoming more and more common these days on the web, and they also add to the user experience. If your site is for a specific service, the footer might be a prime place for a call-to-action. Though a whole sitemap might be overkill for every page on your site, our deeply rooted user interface habits when browsing the web often look for some type of secondary navigation in the footer, or at least a Back To Top link to get us back to the primary navigation, so keep that in mind when tackling this important design element.

There are some excellent examples of engaging footers all over the web, and I’ve rounded up my favorite four to illustrate my point.

Flourish Web Design

Protagonize

Web Designer Wall

43 Folders

Oh, and don’t forget to make it look nice too.

Tags: 2.0, Canada's Web Shop, Chris, Chris Savoie, design, Examples, Footer, Footers, Savoie, Shop, Trends, Web

This entry was posted by Chris Savoie on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.