Top quality web design involves finding the right balance between practical and useful, with visual design and style. Users expect to be able to navigate a website easily, and find what they are looking for almost immediately. But they also expect a website to look current and up to date, interesting, and visually appealing. And these expectations don’t just apply to the above the fold content, or the landing page. Every aspect of your web design will be judged, including your footer. So if you were thinking about making the most of your footer space, you need to make some serious decisions about the design. We are Manchester’s leading specialists, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester. And we work with companies and businesses around the North West and across the region, from Southport to Wigan, to provide high quality web design solutions and support. As a result, we have produced this guide to designing a large and effective footer.
Website footer
So what is the website footer? Well, the footer is the space right at the bottom of your website. Usually this is a different background colour to the rest of the web design, and could contain:
- links for navigation
- contact options and/or a map
- client testimonials
- a search bar
Making sure this space is well designed both practically, and visually, is in an important part of your web design. Your website visitors will often scroll to the bottom of the page, to find the key details they need. And your footer needs to be prepared to meet expectations.
Designing a large and effective footer
So how can you create a large footer that will meet needs and be useful, as well as being visually well designed? Well, you should consider these important tips:
- Be responsive–Your footer needs to be able to respond to changes in screen size, orientation and resolution, just like the rest of your website. And you should always carry out a quick test to make sure that your footer does actually respond. And that your content is still easy to read, and easy to use, on different screens.
- Be useful- make sure your footer is worth navigating to the bottom of the page for. Include all the key details that your potential customers expect, and make sure it is useful.
- Test, and test again- your footer needs to be working effectively, which means you should thoroughly test it on a range of devices, and make sure that images and maps load correctly, and that all links work.
- Organise the content- Don’t just include all the features that your users expect, without organising them first. Make sure you consider the layout of your footer as it is just as important and decision filled as the layout for your website as a whole. Categorize the links, and use visual hierarchy to keep your footer visually effective.
For more information or advice about any aspect of web design, including footers, get in touch with the professionals today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.