Table Of Content
- What is Footer in a WordPress Website?
- What’s the Significance of Footer in a WordPress Website?
- Essential Things to Add in WordPress Footer
- Conclusion
There are several things to focus on at the time of designing a website and its footer is one of the most overlooked things. It may have the least scope in terms of design but you can’t avoid the opportunities it holds. When it comes to user experience and navigation of a website, avoiding a single thing can cost you a lot. So, it will be crucial for you to know about the things to add in WordPress footer.
The WordPress footer presents significant opportunities for navigation and enhancing user experience. It serves as a prime location to include essential elements that can actually create value for your website. By strategically designing the footer, users can easily navigate through the website, access important pages, and gain a comprehensive understanding of the site’s structure, ultimately improving the overall user experience.
In this blog, we will explore the importance of website footers in the realm of web design, user experience, and navigation. By strategically designing the footer, you can ensure that users can easily navigate through your website, access important pages, and gain a comprehensive understanding of its structure. Let’s delve into the significance of the WordPress footer and discover how it can contribute to improving the overall user experience.
What is Footer in a WordPress Website?
As the popular saying goes, “You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes.” That’s essentially what you are trying to achieve with your WordPress website through the footer. Located at the “foot” or end of the web page, the footer should showcase almost everything which is important about your website, from “About the Company” and “Contact Us” to “Privacy Policy,” “Terms of Use,” and more.
The footer is a designated area at the bottom of your WordPress website. It typically contains information that is almost as important as the content but can’t be displayed in the header and content body of the page.
A few significant elements of the footer on any website are copyright info, links to the privacy policy, contact info, social media links, and more. You can even add navigation options to link the internal pages of the website.
What’s the Significance of Footer in a WordPress Website?
Although seemingly a minor part, the footer is among the most significant aspects of any WordPress website. Here are a few reasons why:
- Navigation: One of the purposes of a footer is to provide navigation for your website. That makes finding important info on your website much easier.
- Credibility: By including stuff like privacy policy and copyright policy, along with the authority, protection, and validator certifications, you can establish better credibility for your website.
- SEO: A sitemap and vital pages are essential elements to be added to the footer. That improves the website’s SEO through internal linking. It helps the search crawlers crawl the websites more effectively and ensure better rankings on the SERPs.
- User Experience: The footer provides essential info to the users along with better site navigation. That improves the user experience of the website.
Looking at these points, you can guess that the footer is not “just a small detail.” Rather, it can significantly impact the functionality and user experience of your WordPress website.
So it’s imperative you pay attention to the elements of the footer we have listed in the next section and include them in your WordPress website.
Essential Things to Add in WordPress Footer
As mentioned in the section above, the footer is a significant part of a WordPress website. Not only can it help the users better navigate through the website, but it can also improve the UX and credibility.
So it’s crucial to design and develop the footer with all the necessary elements. Although there are several things you can add in a footer, we have listed only the ones that can positively impact the website.
That being the case, we have listed the key components to add to the footer of your WordPress website:
#1. Website Navigation Links
Incorporating navigation links in the footer is a valuable strategy to ensure that users can easily access crucial links they might have missed while scrolling through the page. Efficient website navigation plays a crucial role in turning visitors into customers.
When users can conveniently find important information in the footer, it significantly enhances their chances of taking desired actions, such as making a purchase or filling out a contact form. By adding navigation links to the footer, you provide an additional opportunity for users to navigate your website and discover the content they need, ultimately improving the overall user experience and boosting conversions.
For instance, if a user visits your website to hire WordPress developers and finds the same service page conveniently available in the footer, it significantly increases the chances of converting their intent into action.
#2. Sitemap
There are two sitemap types: XML & HTML. As you may already know, XML sitemaps help search engines find and crawl the essential pages on your website. But when it comes to the footer, you need the HTML sitemap as it helps the users find all or at least the essential pages of your website. The sitemap also helps showcase the structure of the website for ease of the users.
As discussed earlier, you need the navigation links to ensure the users find their desired pages on your website. But you can’t list all of them as there is not enough space. That’s where the sitemap comes in. You can catalog all pages of your website in the sitemap. It also promotes internal linking, thanks to which the crawler bots can crawl your web pages efficiently.
#3. Contact Forms
One crucial element to include in the WordPress footer is a contact form. This form should capture important information such as the user’s name, phone number, email, and their message or query. Additionally, you can include any other relevant fields that align with your business needs.
To maximize the effectiveness of the contact form, it’s essential to incorporate a compelling call to action (CTA) alongside it. For example, you can use a CTA like “Do you want to turn your dreams into reality? TALK TO OUR EXPERTS.” This encourages more visitors to fill out their details and reach out to you. By analyzing the data from the contact form submissions, you can gain valuable insights into the number of people who have engaged with your website and initiated contact.
Including a well-designed contact form with an enticing CTA in your WordPress footer can greatly enhance user engagement and provide you with valuable metrics to measure the effectiveness of your website.
#4. Social Ratings
One of the most significant things that entice users and potential customers to make a move and sign up for your services is social ratings. It shows how many people liked the products and services of your company.
Google is usually the go-to platform to leave a rating or review for any business. But for online service-based companies, there are other places like Clutch, Glassdoor, Upwork, Envato, Goodfirms, and more. Although you don’t have to showcase all of them, displaying good ratings from even one or two of these portals can help establish a good rep for your company. Most of these platforms show Star ratings, and some, like Upwork, show a Job Success Score (in %).
In case of a mobile app, you may even show the overall ratings from iOS and Google Play Store. These ratings improve credibility and reputation and help sell products and services more easily.
#5. Location
Often, the reason a user visits the bottom of your website is to see where your company is based. That is, either the company’s origin country or all of its offices. So if a user, customer, or even a client wants to visit your physical offices, they can find the location more easily.
Make sure to add the country name (in case of multiple locations around the world), complete address, and link to call the office (or the phone number). Showing the physical proof of the company establishes better trust among the users.
Along with the location, you can also place a map location link in the WordPress footer to make finding your office a little easier.
#6. Contact Details
We have already discussed the contact forms and the location (in which you probably added the contact number below the office address). But there are other ways to contact a company, like Email and other communication channels like Skype. It enables the users or customers to reach out to you more easily in case of any query, complaint, or feedback.
Attaching every sort of contact detail in the footer of your WordPress website is quite significant. It will show the users that you listen to their feedback and care about their views and opinions.
#7. Sticky Footer
Over 55% of the web traffic comes from mobile devices. That’s why any web development company always tries to make their websites more mobile-friendly. Well, this element of the WordPress website footer can be helpful in that case.
Sometimes, when you scroll through the website, the drop-down menus at the top stay right there. So no matter at which point on the page you are, you can easily access these menus to visit other pages.
Just like that, you can use “sticky footers” that stay at the bottom of the user’s screen no matter the position of the page they are in. So you can make the whole footer or a few of its essential elements (like contact form and social media buttons) sticky to ensure the users easy access.
#8. Email Signup Form
The email signup form is another excellent element to be added to the WordPress footer. This mailing list signup form can show the users that you have a newsletter they can subscribe to. Then, the newsletters (or weekly or monthly blasts) can show them everything new in terms of blogs and articles, products and services, and offers and discounts. You can even send them regular emails about everything that’s happening in the industry.
So your readers (those signed up for the newsletter) will be more inclined to buy your products and opt for your services. That way, you’ll effectively create a dedicated user base for your website or company.
#9. Social Media Buttons
Social media can effectively establish an online presence for your company. But what good is this presence if the users can’t find or reach your social accounts?
It’s crucial to allocate space in your website’s footer for social media buttons. Including buttons for popular platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more allows visitors who appreciate your content to easily connect with you on their preferred social channels.
This streamlined process makes it convenient for them to follow and engage with your brand across various social media platforms. By integrating social media buttons in the footer, you can enhance your online presence and encourage broader audience engagement.
#10. Social Media Widgets
It’s not just enough to have a presence on the social media platform. In this digital age, you need a way to showcase that you or your company is active on socials with your latest posts through small individual widgets (or windows) of social platforms. But before you add the social media button or widgets in the WordPress website footer, make sure to curate which posts and comments should be posted.
#11. Site Search Tool
Including a search bar in the footer can greatly enhance user experience, especially when visitors are unable to find what they’re looking for after exploring the website. By placing a search bar in the footer, users can conveniently conduct a search without having to scroll back up.
While it’s common to have a site search field in the header, having one in the footer ensures that when users scroll down, they have immediate access to a search function to find anything they need on the website. The search button becomes a key element in the footer, particularly when prospects have scrolled through the entire page and need a quick and efficient way to locate specific information.
#12. Privacy Policy Link
As one of the crucial factors of any website, you should add the privacy policy of your WordPress website in the footer. This page essentially shows what kind of user data and info is collected by the website and how it is stored. But most importantly, this policy shows how the stored data is used.
Usually, the privacy policy covers the data accumulated through submission forms, contact forms, cookies, and other tracking functions. Some countries and regions require the websites, by law, to include a privacy policy on the website. That assures the users of complete transparency in terms of data use.
#13. Copyright Date
Copyright is one of the most important elements for creating an effective footer for your WordPress website. The copyright part on any website includes the copyright symbol succeeded by the year and name of the company.
Copyright is significant for protecting the website against plagiarism. Moreover, not including this tiny thing in the footer can make the website a little unprofessional.
#14. Protection and Validator Logos
It’s important you add the protection and validator logos and page links in the footer. It helps establish faith and credibility among the users. These logos also show that the website is secure and compliant with industry-standard protocols.
Adding logos of security providers like Copyscape, DMCA, or any other will help assure the users that their personal data and info are safe and secure. Plus, W3C or CSS validator logos can help demonstrate that the website’s code is valid and compliant with web standards.
Optimizing your WordPress website’s footer extends beyond the mentioned elements, as there are numerous other possibilities to explore. These particular elements, though, hold the potential to enhance navigation, credibility, user experience (UX), and search rankings. However, the design of the footer is a highly individualized process. You have the freedom to analyze the aforementioned components and craft a truly distinctive footer that aligns with your preferences and goals.
Leveraging WordPress’s extensive plugin library, you can access a wide range of tools to create an exceptional footer that suits your website’s unique needs and aspirations. Let your creativity guide you as you build a footer that leaves a lasting impression on your visitors.
Conclusion
People often think a good start and fine content in the middle is all it takes to get the users on board. But they forget that so many things that can help promote CTA can only be added at the end of the site.
That’s why the footer is among the most significant parts of any WordPress website. It can boost credibility and improve the navigation and user experience of the site. Certain footer elements, like sitemap, can promote internal linking, resulting in more “upvotes” from the search crawlers.
With that in mind, we have developed a complete guide to building a well-structured footer, including a list of all the things to add in WordPress website. A few of the fundamental components in this guide include website navigation links, an HTML sitemap, a contact form, contact details, a sticky footer, Email Signup Form, social media buttons, a site search tool, and more.
But some of these elements can be a little tricky to include. So you may get in touch with a professional WordPress development company. They have the relevant experience for creating the best footer for your WordPress website.
