A footer should answer what people scroll down for: your phone number, address, hours, a few key links and the legal pages. Repeating the whole menu there buries those details under links nobody reads.

Four columns of links

The footer on many small business sites begins with four columns of links: every service, every page about the company, every blog category.

Below those sit eight social icons, a newsletter box, a row of association logos, the copyright line and a credit for whoever built the site.

Somewhere in there, sometimes, is a phone number. Often it is not there at all.

The footer has become a second site map, and nobody reads site maps.

What people scroll down for

Visitors who reach the bottom of a page are usually doing one of two things. They have finished reading and want to act, or they could not find something and are checking where it usually lives.

Years of browsing have taught them where that is. The phone number, the address, the hours, the privacy policy and the jobs page: people expect those at the bottom of every page.

A footer that answers them at a glance earns its place on every page of the site. A footer that makes them hunt through forty links fails at the one job visitors gave it.

Why footers fill up

The third lingers longest. Stuffing footers with keyword links stopped helping in search years ago, but the habit outlived the reason, and many themes still arrive with columns designed to hold them.

The cost on a phone

On a computer, four columns sit side by side. On a phone they stack, and four columns of eight links become thirty-two lines and several screens of scrolling.

The visitor who scrolled down for the phone number meets that wall of links first. If the number sits at the very bottom, beneath the newsletter box and the logos, some give up before they reach it.

Small links stacked close together are also hard to tap accurately, so a visitor aiming for one page often lands on its neighbour.

What a footer should carry

First, the business name with the phone number and email address, written as text, and the number set to dial when it is tapped on a phone.

Then the address with a link to directions, and the hours, including the detail that matters most, such as closed Sundays or by appointment only.

Then four to six key links: the main services, booking or a quote, and the jobs page if you are hiring. Only the pages people come looking for at the bottom.

Then the legal pages: the privacy policy, plus terms or a cancellation policy wherever you take bookings or payments. Social icons come last, only for accounts somebody actually updates.

The copyright line and a small credit for whoever built the site can sit at the very bottom, beneath everything that matters to a customer.

A worked example

A riding stable outside Chilliwack runs lessons for children and adults, summer camps, pony parties and a small boarding barn. Over six years its site grew a page for each.

Its footer listed thirty-one pages in four columns, followed by eight social icons, a newsletter box and logos for three associations and the feed store.

The phone number was not in the footer at all, and the address appeared only on the contact page. Parents booking camps phoned to ask where the stable was, once they had found the number.

On a phone the footer ran to seven screens, and the waiver form, which every new rider needs before a first lesson, was the twenty-sixth link. Staff were emailing it to parents several times a week.

The new footer starts with the phone number, email, address with a directions link, and office hours. Then five links: lessons, camps, boarding, the waiver form and the privacy policy.

Two social icons stayed, for the accounts the stable posts to. The full list of pages lives in the menu, where it always did.

Hours that change

Hours in a footer have one weakness: they are only right while somebody keeps them right.

Seasonal businesses should write the season into the hours rather than letting them drift: summer hours with their dates, a holiday closure in the weeks it applies.

If the footer and the Google My Business listing disagree, customers believe whichever they saw last, and one of them is wrong. Change both on the same day.

The legal pages

The footer is where people look for the privacy policy, and since Europe's new privacy rules arrived in May, more of them are looking.

A site that collects anything through forms should link a policy from every page, and the policy should describe what actually happens to the information, not what a template guessed.

Terms of sale, a cancellation policy, or the refund rules for camps and classes belong beside it wherever they apply.

The counter-case

Large sites are different. A store with hundreds of categories, or an organisation with many departments, may reasonably carry a bigger footer, organised into clear groups, because visitors genuinely use it to find their way.

Some designs use a large footer well, as a deliberate final section with a short summary and one clear next step.

And a business that sends a newsletter worth reading can keep a sign-up box there, as long as the contact details come first.

For most small business sites, though, the footer should carry what people scroll down for, and nothing that crowds it out.

The check

  1. Scroll to your footer on a phone.
  2. Count the links and the screens they fill.
  3. Time how long the phone number takes to find.
  4. Put contact details and hours first.
  5. Cut the links to the few people need.
  6. Keep icons only for accounts you update.
  7. Link the legal pages from every page.

Step four is the change that matters. Everything else is subtraction; putting the phone number, address and hours at the top of the footer is what turns it back into something visitors use.

The top of the page has its own version of this problem, covered in full-width photos that push the message down.

Frequently asked questions

What should a website footer include?

The phone number and email as text, the address with a directions link, your hours, four to six key links, the legal pages, and icons only for accounts you update.

Should the footer repeat the main menu?

No. The menu already lists every page. A footer repeating it buries the contact details people scroll down for, and on a phone it stacks into several screens.

Do footer links help search rankings?

Not in any useful way now. Keyword links stuffed into footers stopped helping years ago, though the habit of adding them has lingered on many sites.

Why does the footer matter on phones?

Columns that sit side by side on a computer stack on a phone. Thirty links become several screens, and a phone number at the bottom sits beneath all of them.

Which social icons belong in the footer?

Only those for accounts somebody actually updates, usually one or two. An icon leading to an account that last posted years ago tells visitors nobody is minding it.

Where should the privacy policy link go?

In the footer of every page, where people expect to find it. Terms, cancellation rules or refund policies belong beside it wherever you take bookings or payments.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Footer longer than the page above it?

Send us your site. We will suggest what the footer should keep, what to cut, and what is missing.

Start a Conversation