Not so long ago most footers were not more than a single line with a simple copyright notice and a link to the site designer. That time has passed and the footer has evolved. The current trend is creating a big, fat footer for your website. These large footers are generally stocked full with content: about, connect, subscribe, links to other articles, sitemap, back to the top link, categories list, recent comments, etc.
While some designers just went along with this trend, others did not. Why should you extend your footer? Or Why would you keep the footer short? This article explores the pros and cons of an extensive footer. Of course it matters what kind of site you own and which style you pursue. Is it a blog or portfolio site? Do you have a minimalistic style or do you go all out? Keep that in mind when reading this debate.
Pros of A Fat Footer
User-Friendliness
Suggesting other content at the end of a page makes your site a bit more user-friendly. See it through the eyes of a visitor: When I reach the end of a page, there is always the question where I’m going next. Usually I click the site away. But by providing links to other articles you can keep visitors on your site. You can also provide contact information or your social media links (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
Design Was Here offers recent posts, comments and tweets offering plenty of choices for what to do next.
Boost for SEO
Extra content means more keywords. Google likes the extra keywords, so a plus for SEO. It isn’t much because the Google ranking for the footer tag is quite low, but all things help.
Please don’t take advantage of it. Some sites have been punished for using this technique for SEO-spam.
Viget Inspire utilizes a category listing in their footer. Categories and Tags are useful for slight SEO boosts.
Express Your Creativity
The footer is a good place to show how creative you can be. If you’re an illustrator this is a good place to show a character. If you’re a product designer – show us a product. The possibilities are only limited to your imagination.
Yo Div begins their useful footer with a creative and fun illustration that matches the feel of the site.
Cons of a Fat Footer
Slows Your Page Down
More content means that it takes longer to load the page. If it takes a visitor too long to load your site, they will click your site away. Use a program like Yslow to A-B test your footer. If the footer adds too much to your loading time, take some content out, or kill the footer as a whole.
Colorburned includes a lot of images and external links (flickr, advertisement) that may increase load time. A beautiful footer nonetheless.
Commented Out
Is it useful on a site where an article generates many comments? I usually don’t read the comments. If a visitor can’t see the footer, what’s the point in designing one? To overcome this problem you can put the suggestions for other articles first and after that the comments. Or perhaps a drop down box which opens the comments.
Smashing Magazine’s wonderful footer is usually buried below hundreds of comments.
Disconnected
Some footers are designed apart from the design of the site instead of matching the tone of the site as a whole.
While the entire design of this site is undesirable, a mismatching footer only makes it worse.
Soh Tanaka does a much better job of blending the footer with the rest of the site.
Conclusion (The Footer of this Article)
Personally I like those big, fat footers. Especially if they are well designed (like YoDiv). But that’s just my opinion, I’m curious about your thoughts. How much attention do you pay to the design of your footer and do think it’s really necessary?
I really love fat footers, I find they really help you find your way to the next piece of content when you reach the bottom of a page or article. There’s plenty of room of cool stuff such as flickr feeds and useful links.
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Great article Chris. Voted it up. I personally like them sometimes and other times I don’t. But that’s a personal issue I guess. Or sometimes certain sites don’t do it attractively.
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Any suggestions on what you’d like to see added to the Visual Swirl Footer?
I like them, if they are used correctly. They need to create interest and contain information that the site’s visitors will want to check out more. Flickr or other media streams are great ones, but no manner what it is, it needs to enhance the design. Great post Chris.
I’m looking into adding a flickr feed, just haven’t gotten around to it. And I can’t take credit for the post. It was written by Frank Suyker. Great job Frank!
I prefer to have a kind of footer like those on the list, it is a huge space for other stuff
Interesting article .. it makes sense to put your ‘about’ information on the footer of every page instead of using up an entire page for it by itself especially if your site is only new and you don’t have much to say ‘about’ it.
Great thought! I include a little taste of the About Me in my footer while linking to a full page for those who want to know more.
About the loading time – most of the times it jus doesn’t really matter
. Why?
The page still loads from the top to the bottom – so the time users have to wait to read the article is the same with and without the footer.
Not entirely true – Google gives you a plus if your website loads faster – so it does matter if loading times are short.
Yes, but like I said in my comment
for the >readers< it doesn't matter. They will still wait the same amount of time to read the article whether there is a long-fat footer or not.
Nice post. There is much to ponder. Thanks
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Great post.
How about Fat Footers that get Thin on sub-pages?
Varying sized footers? Like smaller versions of homepage banners? Interesting thought although I don’t know what purpose it might serve.
A footer is supposed to be nonessentials – in which case, if you keep the footer (even if it has much content) trim, concise and well-designed it serves its purpose well and can help navigation and be a good content driver. Well designed, cohesive footers always get a second look from me.
Thanks for a well written, succinct article.
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I like your point about being non-essential. A website would do just fine without it but if designed correctly, it may keep you interested a little bit longer.
Good post, I like fat footers for the SEO value. Also a good place to put links to social media profiles etc since the footer will post on every page.
I’m redesigning my WordPress site to include a fat footer as we speak!
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That’s one of the first places I look when searching for a link to someone’s twitter profile.
Post the link here when you’re done redesigning and you could even show a before/after.
Which to share my template footer which I found interesting for your post
Over the past 6 months I’ve been really impressed by a lot of footers, so much so that I did my own
http://www.simonowendesign.co.uk/
Hope you like it!
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Very nice!
A small add-on: the Dutch site Fontanel has a footer which is darkened until you go over it. Nice!
Link: http://www.fontanel.nl/
Looks like your footer has been commented out.
Hi Chris, good article. There is a lot of cool footer out there and I’ve been fascinated to see how the footer have become more sophisticated lately. Very good ideas, good designs, synthesis of navigation, relevant information, etc. In my case I used the footer to have the important information in every page and I think it works!
We recently deployed a fat footer for a client,
http://hip2save.com lots of content down there
nice! Well executed.
big fat, I think it was mentioned that once you are at the bottom of an article or post then where do you go from there, well, either to another site or if you have something else relevant or related why not have it on your site and keep your audience captive
Well put. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about that when I designed my footer but I may go back and tweak some of the resources I include to keep users here longer.
Fat footers are the future, they can be ignored when not needed and are v useful when in use. Thanks for this collection.
Dude – you need to check your background image for central column – isnt repeating downwards in Chrome so all dark text is very hard to read against dark background.
Thanks for the heads up. It was actually some code from one of the social sites that I’m linking to that wasn’t loading correctly. The problem has been removed.
Another Informative post that was worth reading
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Lots of Great information in your blogpost, I favorited your site so I can visit again in the near future, Thanks
The purpose of Twitter is to receive and deliver short messages from other Twitter users. Many use it strictly to interact socially, but Twitter is also becoming a essential instrument for internet marketing.
Love these, zappos just got a new fat footer as well.
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Well I agree with the point of the buried footer, the people don’t like to read hundreed of comments, but a very big part of them uses the pagination of comments
Great list
Thanks for informations! they are realy useful for my works! i take your blog as my teacher.. thanks
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I thought I was going to find more information than what I already know, nice article nonetheless.
FYI, your footer is getting buried.
Thanks.
Concept of Fat footer is very gud, likes or dislikes depend upon what and how you had presented in the footer.Very important: if your page is long enough, you are simply killing your fat footer. Its not to be used in these cases.
I really like the footer spacious. Congratulations on post
The fat footer concept is a great idea for an internal link strategy for SEO.Great way to have good accessibility stuff