What's the point of a footer? Does your website need one?

I met with a graphic designer a few days ago to go over their website mock-up and architecture before meeting with their client. The designer asked me if a footer area was required and what they should use if for. I told him that as a general rule, the footer contains the copyright information and secondary links, such as privacy statement and/or sitemap; however, these days, it is common for the footer area to be used differently.

There are no rules when deciding if a footer is needed or not. Some websites have one, others don’t. Some designers like to repeat the top navigation at the bottom of the page so that users don’t have to scroll back to the top. This is particularly handy when your pages are extremely long.

Another useful way to use the footer area is to display the contact information such as address, telephone, email etc… Lately, a new trend has emerged where designers are now using the footer area to display “bonus” information. This is particularly true for blogs which like to display flickr images, rss feeds, blogrolls, recent posts, etc…

One of my favourite designers, Veerle, recently launched a website for a Toronto company called “Just add heat“. Veerle uses the footer area to display the full site map and displays the logo. She used very bold colours for the header and footer areas which makes for an elegant design.

Jeff Croft and Footnote use their footer area to display information about themselves. This unique approach is a great way to use this otherwise neglected area of real estate.