President of WebFX. Bill has over 25 years of experience in the Internet marketing industry specializing in SEO, UX, information architecture, marketing automation and more. William’s background in scientific computing and education from Shippensburg and MIT provided the foundation for MarketingCloudFX and other key research and development projects at WebFX.
When you’re designing your website, you’re worried about creating an organized navigation, the perfect style, and using high-quality visuals to boost engagement. As a result, some elements, like your website footer, can often get overlooked. I mean, it’s at the bottom anyway — does it really matter?
The answer is yes.
Your website footer is fundamental is helping people navigate your website. So if you want to create a good footer, you need to look at website footer examples to see how to do it successfully.
Keep reading to see examples of website footers to get inspired when creating yours!
Key Takeaways for Creating a Stellar Website Footer
Integrate important links, like legal information, contact methods, and your sitemap.
Include your brand’s logo to further reinforce brand recognition
Choose a different color than your background to make your footer stand out (but keep it within your color scheme)
Integrate ways for people to connect with your brand (social links, email sign-up bar)
Keep your website footer organized, especially if you’re using a lot of links
What is a website footer?
The footer of a website is a section on at the bottom of a webpage that contains important information about the business and website. It often includes liks to things like privacy policies, social media links, and contact information. This feature helps people find information they need that they may not have found elsewhere.
A common misconception is that people think website footers aren’t important or necessary, especially when you have a navigation bar at the top. Think of your website footer as a safety net — if visitors don’t find what they need in your navigation, they’ll turn to your footer to see if they can find it.
Expert insights from
Kyle HelderDirector of Interactive Service Strategy
“A website’s footer is akin to the final handshake at the end of a meeting—it leaves a lasting impression. It’s prime real estate for displaying crucial information like contact details, social media links, and legal disclosures, enhancing credibility and accessibility, ultimately bolstering the company’s online marketing potential and solidifying its digital footprint.”
4 popular types of website footers you can create
Before we dive into the list of website footer examples, let’s talk about the types of website footers you can make. There are multiple types of footers you can use, depending upon your business’s needs.
One type of footer you’ll see used on websites is the fat footer. These footers often contain dozens of links to different pages on the company’s website, hence why they tend to be “fatter.”
When to use it: If you have a lot of valuable links on your page that you think someone visiting your website would like easy access to, then the fat footer may be the best option for you.
2. Call to action (CTA) footer
Many businesses will use CTA footers to drive website visitors to take an action, whether it’s to contact the business, fill out a form, or join an email list.
When to use it: The CTA footer is a great option if you’re looking to engage people who scroll to the bottom of your page and are looking for what to do next.
3. Product footer
If you’re an ecommerce business, you have a lot of products to share with your website visitors. A product footer focuses on driving people to visit specific product pages.
When to use it: If you sell online, the product footer is a good option to keep people shopping. You can direct people to some of your most popular products to increase dwell time and sales.
4. Narrow footer
The narrow footer is a standard website footer that includes links to the most important pages on a website.
When to use it: If you don’t have a lot of pages on your website, the narrow footer is a good choice. It allows you to direct attention to important pages and keep people engaged.
7 key elements to put in a website footer
Before we dive into this list of examples of website footers, let’s talk about the elements you need for your website footer.
Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll want to include in it:
Legal information: Legal information includes your copyright, privacy policy, terms of use, and similar pages of information. Adding this to your footer ensures it’s easily accessible for your audience.
Contact information: If someone scrolls all the way to the bottom of your page, you want to make it easy for them to connect with you. You can include a “contact us” link and/or phone number at the bottom, so people can contact you.
Email sign-up: Having an email sign-up at the bottom creates more opportunities for you to capture leads for your business.
Social media links: Your website footer serves as a great hub to get people to connect with your business. Including links to your social media pages in your footer can help people find you on social media.
Sitemap: Search engines need access to your XML sitemap to properly index pages on your website. Including it as a link in your website footer is a great way to help search engine crawlers find it.
Navigation: Your website footer is a great place to create a secondary navigation. You can list sitelinks to important pages to help people find information they need.
Logo: Adding your logo to your website footer is a great way to build brand recognition and remind people what website they’re browsing on.
The 18 best website footer design examples to inspire in 2024
Here are some of the best website footer examples from global brands to help you see what a good website footer looks like:
1. Cartier
Footer type: Narrow and CTA footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Cartier includes numerous elements in their website footer that you’d expect to see — they have contact information, a place to subscribe to emails, and links to their social media pages. One element that makes their website footer a good example is they include accessibility elements that allow people of all abilities can browse their website.
2. Loungefly
Footer type: Fat footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Loungefly is one of the best examples of website footers because their footer is clean, simple, and easy to use. They include numerous helpful links, but don’t overclutter their footer with information. Loungefly also includes their logo prominently to keep their brand top of mind.
3. Target
Footer type: Fat footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Target includes a lot of important links you want to see in a website footer, as well as their logo, legal information, and links to their social media. Where Target stands out is their use of icons next to links to help add a visual element of branding that draws the user’s eye.
4. Wild
Footer type: Product and CTA footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Wild does a great job of carrying their company’s branding through their website footer by using a bright yellow background that fits with their brand’s unique style. Their comprehensive footer includes a site map, social media and certification icons, and a mailing list sign-up field — all elements you want to see in a website footer.
5. Crunch Labs
Footer type: Narrow and CTA footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Crunch Labs carries their engineering toy company’s branding into their website footer by using the graph paper style as a backdrop and integrating their bold yellow accents into the text and buttons. Crunch Labs also includes helpful information you want to see in a footer, like contact email, phone number, and links to social media pages.
6. UPMC
Footer type: Fat footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: UMPC is a hospital with a lot to offer, and their website footer reflects that. It’s a great example of a website footer because it’s well organized and makes it easy to find important information. Not to mention, they do a great job of integrating their contact information and social profiles, making it easy for patients to connect with them.
7. RCA Records
Footer type: Narrow footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: RCA is a great example of a simple website footer design — Not every business will have dozens of links to add to the bottom of the page. RCA does a great job of including important links, while also showcasing their branding through their design and logo usage.
8. Patagonia
Footer type: CTA and narrow footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Patagonia is one of the best website footer design examples because their footer is designed to make the experience easier for users. They use bold buttons to help users find important information like order status, returns and exchanges, and more. Patagonia also includes important information in their website footer, like their email sign-up and copyright info.
9. Oreo
Footer type: CTA and narrow footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Oreo does a great job of carrying their company’s branding through their website footer with the blue and white design, the Oreo graphic, and logo. They also make it easy for people to connect with their brand by adding their email sign up form and social media buttons.
10. Carlo’s Bakery
Footer type: Narrow footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Carlo’s Bakery is a great example of how a food service business can create a functional and useful website footer. The most notable element of their footer is their integration of their locations, which makes it easy for a wbesite visitor to find one of Carlo’s bakeries near them.
11. Sideshow
Footer type: Narrow and CTA footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Sideshow is one of the best examples of website footers because it includes all the features you want to see — legal information, an email sign-up button, and links to important pages. They also have a top-tier footer because they make elements, like their social media button and CTA button, pop off the page and draw attention.
12. The Woobles
Footer type: Narrow and CTA footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: The Woobles’ website footer is simple, organized, and easy to use. One great feature they offer is a summation of the payment options they accept, making it easy for website visitors to know if they take their preferred payment methods.
13. milk_shake
Footer type: Product and narrow footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: milk_shake does everything right with their website footer — they have social media buttons and links to important pages. They also do a great job of laying out all forms of contact, so people can find the right contact information they need easily.
14. Marvel
Footer type: Narrow footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Marvel has a simple navigation that includes many of the elements you want to see, like legal information, social media links, and their logo. They also do a great job of integrating links to their other offerings, creating a better user experience that allows users to find the Marvel service they need.
15. Billie
Footer type: Narrow and CTA footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Billie is a great example of a website footer that is simple but still provides the necessary information users want. They also do a great job of keeping their branding language consistent in the footer to create a cohesive experience for website visitors.
16. Mondo
Footer type: Narrow and CTA footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Mondo has a simple footer, but it does a great job of carrying their branding and style to the bottom of the website. They also include key features of a good website footer, like links to important pages, an email sign up, and links to their social media.
17. IBM
Footer type: Fat footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: IBM’s footer is a great example of how to make your footer clean, simple, and organized. All of their links are categorized by detailed headers, making it easy to locate what you need from them.
18. Method
Footer type: Narrow and CTA footer
Why it’s one of the best website footer examples: Method is a great example of a website footer that carries their branding throughout the footer. From their logo to the hints of purple throughout the text, they do a great job of integrating their branding into the footer.
FAQs on creating a website footer
Have some lingering questions about creating a footer on your website? We’ve got answers!
You saw all the website footer design examples, but you still might not be sold on why you need to invest the time in building yours. Here are some quick benefits of an optimized footer:
Reiterate important information: You always want to have your contact information accessible, so people can reach out to your business. Your footer enables you to reiterate that information for your audience as they scroll to the bottom of your pages.
Double-down on navigation: A big benefit of your footer is that it enables you to double-down on your navigation. You can place important links at the bottom of your page, in your footer, to ensure easy access to important pages.
Expand social media followers: Your website navigation helps people find your social media pages with ease, so they can follow you. It’s a great way to boost your followers.
As you can see by the website footer examples from above, not everyone has the same elements in their footer. Some businesses opt to include their logo, while others don’t. So that leads to the question, is there anything you need to include?
Yes.
You’ll want to ensure that you include the following in your footer:
Privacy policies
Terms of use
Your sitemap
Copyright notice
Essentially, you want to make all the legal information easily accesible on your website to avoid people claiming you’re hiding it. Additionally, as we mentioned earlier, having your sitemap link is essential to get your website crawled properly.
These are the only elements that are highly recommended to include in your website footer. Other elements like your logo, social media icons, and email sign-ups are optional.
A really common question people ask is what color should I make the footer of my website? Truthfully, there isn’t one specific color that will make your footer shine and stand out from the rest. The reality is that your footer needs to fit into the design of your website.
The best approach with footer web design is choosing a color opposite of your page’s main color. Let’s say your website’s color themes are white, black, and gray. If the majority of your website’s background is white, you might choose to make your footer black or gray to help it stand out and signal an end to your website.
It’s always good to make your footer a different color that the rest of your background of your website, so people notice it.
A good website footer includes essential features like contact details, sitemaps, social media links, copyright notices, privacy policy, and navigation links. It has consistent design and aids in a website’s visual and functional aesthetics.
A good website footer is engaging, enhances user experience, and focuses on design best practices like intuitive hierarchy, responsiveness, accessibility, clear, concise text, and minimalist background or layout.
To ensure you put out a functional website footer for your website visitors, follow these best practices:
Make sure the footer fits with your website design: Your website footer’s design should coordinate with the rest of your website’s design. It should fit naturally into your website.
Check that the links work: The last thing you want is for someone to try to click on a link in your footer, only to find it doesn’t work. Test all your links and make sure they take people to the proper pages.
Keep it organized: Don’t throw a bunch of links in your footer and hope users find what they need. Create a logical organization that makes it easy for people to find the link they want.
Yes. Creating a website footer helps search engine bots, like ones from Google, crawl and index pages on your website. Since many of your most important pages are included in your footer, it’s a great way to ensure Google bots can easily crawl the pages so they get indexed and rank in search results.
There isn’t an exact formula for adding footer links to boost your SEO, but there are some links you’ll want to consider adding to your footer.
Here are some good options:
Contact page: Adding a link to your contact page provides a good user experience by making it easy for visitors to figure out how to get in touch with you.
Customer reviews: A link to your customer reviews will help people get quick insight into your company, products, and services, leading to a better user experience.
Sitemap: Your sitemap helps users find the pages they need with ease.
Legal information: Including links to your Privacy Policy and Terms of Use is important, so users always have access to it if they have questions.
About Us: Make it easy for people to get to know your business and your purpose by including your About Us page in your website footer.
Looking for creative ideas for your website footer design?
Now that you have a better idea of what to look for in a website footer, you can create your own and improve your brand awareness and engagement. If you’re looking for professional design services to illuminate your vision, we’d love to help you!
WebFx is a full-scale digital marketing agency with 28 years of industry experience. Our designers are experts in their field and understand the importance of eye-catching, engaging, and thought-provoking design. They use data-driven results and industry insight to design a website footer that resonates with your audience and archives your mission.
Contact us to learn how we can help you maximize your website design and revenue.
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President of WebFX. Bill has over 25 years of experience in the Internet marketing industry specializing in SEO, UX, information architecture, marketing automation and more. William’s background in scientific computing and education from Shippensburg and MIT provided the foundation for MarketingCloudFX and other key research and development projects at WebFX.
