7 things you need to have in your website’s footer
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Ever been scrolling through a website’s page and when you get to the bottom you realize you feel like there’s nowhere else to go from there?
There’s no suggestion for what’s next, so you just exit the browser tab & move on with your day.
Or maybe you were looking for a specific page type that wasn’t in the header navigation, so you scrolled down to the footer, …only to find it wasn’t there either.
At that point, I’m either clicking the X button or trying to find a way to search for that mystery thing I’m looking for.
All of this can easily lead to your website visitor bouncing too quickly, ne’er to return.
Obviously, you don’t want that, so let’s take a look at some things that we can add to our website’s footer that can help our visitors navigate our site better & stick around longer.
7 must-have elements to have your website footer
❶ Legal shiz
Copyright notice
It’s a common, recommended practice to put this notice in your footer. Basically, it’s to deter others from copying your shit by saying hey I own the copyright to all of this content.
What to include?
The copyright symbol (Option + G on a Mac) ©, the word Copyright, or abbreviated Copr.
The year or years the copyright includes. Some people only list the current year, others include starting - current.
Your name or your business’ name, or both.
TERMS OF SERVICE
Terms & Conditions of Service or Use are highly recommended, but to the best of my knowledge are not legally required. These terms dictate the ‘laws of the land’ on YOUR website and communicate how you expect people to use the content on it. They exist to protect YOU.
It’s also good to have Terms of Service in place so you can set a legal guideline for how you intend for people to use your website’s content and what they can/can’t do with it.
Don’t have one of these yet?
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PRIVACY POLICY + COOKIES NOTICE
These Privacy Policies (which should include Cookie notices) are legal requirements, to the best of my knowledge –as I’m not an attorney (& so this isn’t legal advice; please consult an attorney in your jurisdiction for the final word on these things!) Legal requirements mean this is not a request; it’s legally mandated. You could be subject to fines for noncompliance; those amounts likely vary between laws & countries, and may be stackable PER infraction.
Privacy policies are required because they exist to protect our VIEWERS –not you.
As far as I’m aware, in the U.S. the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) requires us to list our privacy policy in a conspicuous location ––meaning, it has to be visible on every page on our website.
Not only because of that law but also because there may be similar ones in countries outside the U.S., it’s always a good thing to have a quick & easy way for your website’s visitors to access your Terms of Service and your Privacy Policy from everywhere –and the best way to do that is to place the link in your footer.
These laws are in place because we must allow our website’s fans & viewers to understand how we use and collect their data.
And yes, no matter what you just thought, you likely ARE collecting data on your visitors; whether it’s via Google Analytics, form submissions, embedded schedulers or forms from outside services, embedded videos from YouTube or Vimeo or Loom (which have their own analytics), product purchases, or cookies that install on viewer’s browsers which help websites run faster & more efficiently, and a lot more ––you’re both collecting & storing information.
DON’T HAVE THESE YET?
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If the thought of manually updating privacy policies & cookies notices sounds a little scary –because you might forget to check to see when there are updates to swap out… then check out Termageddon*. It’s a subscription service that embeds these policies onto your website (where you want them) and keeps them updated for you.
Specifically, their Cookies widget is really robust & seems like a much better than what Squarespace gives you in Settings. Termageddon’s widget allows users to choose what they want to allow & save their individual settings!
For just about $100/year, this may give you more peace of mind –especially as privacy laws seem to change continuously, worldwide.
You can check them out yourself or use my affiliate code LAUNCH10 to get 10% off your first year!
❷ A basic Sitemap
That sounds super techy, doesn’t it?
Luckily for Squarespace users, they create a sitemap for every website built on their platform, automatically. You can access it or link to it from your footer by including a link to your website URL by adding /sitemap.xml at the end.
My sitemap for example looks like this:
😬 Let’s be honest, NO ONE wants to use that because by default it’s not styled; it’s just a bunch of code. Google loves it & uses it, so make sure you submit that to Google Search Console so it knows how to crawl your site for updates & adjust your search rankings.
Otherwise, who’s going to sift through all of that to find the link they want? NOT ME.
So, the better thing to do is to create your own list of important links & ways to help someone navigate your website, easily.
There’s nothing worse than going to a company’s website looking for their Help section or a way to contact customer service and there isn’t a link for it. If you’re really determined you can Google that company and the page type you need to find, but most people just give up & go elsewhere instead.
Here’s a few examples of a designed ‘sitemap’ style footer and one example without it:
So if you get to the bottom of 3 out of these 4 website examples, you can find the next place you want to go, most likely. All the main pages are listed for easy access from anywhere on the site.
On Marie Forleo’s site however, once you scroll to the bottom, there’s a call-to-action above her footer and in her footer, but no navigation down there whatsoever, besides her links to privacy, terms and cookies, etc.
While there’s certainly nothing wrong with this style, here’s why I hate this type of footer:
If you came to that website aimlessly, once you get to the bottom, if neither of those calls-to-action are serving your curiosity, you ‘gon leave.
Obviously with her bazillions of monthly website visitors, she’s getting her income in other ways & doesn’t need to be as cautious about this the rest of us and she can do what she wants. Plus most of her important page links are at the top of the page anyway.
While I agree that simple does look better, it doesn’t necessarily function better… if there’s no useful functionality there. If you make it all the way to the bottom of the page of a given website, only to find nothing there to help you navigate, it’s not that likely you’ll keep scrolling all the way up to look for where to go next.
SIDE NOTE: that’s why many websites have a back-to-top button for easy access to the main navigation area
So keep all of that in mind when you build out this part of your footer.
❸ Search bar
I’m a search-er. I use these things ALL the time. If I can’t find a link that looks like the thing I’m looking for, before I close out of the website & move on, I’ll try the search bar.
Give your visitors a way to easily search your website for whatever they came for, ESPECIALLY if you don’t have a custom Error 404 page which displays wherever there’s a broken link on your website.
How? There are several options for websites using Squarespace:
add a Search Block (the simplest option)
add a button labeled “search” or something similar & link to your search page
link some text to your search page
create your own image in something like Canva or Adobe Illustrator & export it as a png, then link it to your search page
How do you find your search page?
Every Squarespace website comes with its own Search page, just like they all come with a sitemap. To find your search page URL, just type in your custom domain and add /search to the end.
For example, my search link is: https://www.launchthedamnthing.com/search
❹ Logo or an alternate brand icon
This is a great chance to reinforce your brand, remind the visitor where they are (what brand’s site they’re on), show your versatility, or nail down your brand-vibes, by placing your logo, a branded icon or your alternate logo in your footer.
It doesn’t have to be huge or even in full color. Keeping it simple is always good, but consistent with your brand’s style or vibe.
❺ Contact info
Make it easy for anyone to contact you when they need to. Whether that means a link to your support chat or email, a link to your email address, or a form to fill out, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s easy to find & use.
A lot of businesses will put their deets right there in the footer, but that tends to work better for larger businesses with physical locations, in my opinion.
For micro-businesses, independent contractors, and freelancers it usually works best to link to your contact page where all of that information lives & can be updated in one place.
❻ Social media icons
Don’t forget to add links to all of the social channels you hang out on the most. That means don’t add a link to your Twitter profile if you don’t post more than once every 6 months because there’s nothing new for your fans to follow there.
I post the most on Instagram, generally, but I also crosspost to Facebook & sometimes Twitter because I’m lazy & crossposting is easy. 😂 I also include Pinterest because I have a lot of great content pinned there, including my own, and a decent fan following my page there. And I include Medium because I post some of my blogs there too for extra backlinks to my site & exposure to a different audience.
Again: be strategic about what you add here & don’t include platforms you aren’t (or don’t plan to be very) active on.
❼ Lead magnet (opt-in)
Last but not least, your footer is a great place to include a link to your most popular opt-in, or a basic way for anyone to subscribe or follow along with you.
In my footer, I have a link in the Extras section that says something like “Be A Groupie!” which links to a general subscribe form so anyone can become an LTDT Groupie & follow along with me. Believe it or not, even though it’s not a traditional sign-up “form,” I do get subscribers there fairly frequently. 🥰 I think these people are really special because they haven’t subscribed for an exchange; they’ve signed up just to hang out with me & learn more from me.
Why bother with this email thing?
Feeling like you have too much on your to-do list already?
REASON 1: Your email list is LITERALLY the only marketing strategy you can own. You don’t own the email marketing service’s company, but you DO own your list there & you can export it any time for safekeeping.
Exporting your list is NOT something you can do with your Instagram followers, for example. If Instagram disappeared next week and that was your only way to contact your fan base, you’d be completely screwed.
REASON 2: You control what content your email list sees & when they see it. It doesn’t depend on algorithms, and delivery doesn’t depend on constant changes to that algorithm. You have more 1:1 access to your people through email and generally, that includes a higher percentage of engagement since all of those people have actually decided to give you their precious email address! They’ve ASKED to follow you and receive your content on a more personal level and that’s something social platforms don’t offer.
READ MORE: Why your business needs an email list
So make sure you have a place to connect with your groupies, OFF social media platforms.
Use opt-ins (freebies) to encourage subscriber growth
Don’t have an opt-in to hand out in exchange for your fan’s email addresses? One easy thing to do is to think of something your client would need in the beginning stages of how they come to decide to work with or buy from you and create that thing.
You can just start with one and go from there. Don’t know how to deliver it? I’ve got some ideas & tutorials in these posts:
How to deliver opt-ins with FloDesk (or any email marketing service that’s not Squarespace Email Campaigns)
