Sunday, 13 November 2011, 1:34 PM

What Do You Place in the Footer?

I recently wrote a blog post at I love e-commerce about a web shop’s bottom navigation. In almost all the examples I show the registration for a newsletter is placed at the bottom of the page. During all the years I’ve worked with e-mailing I have claimed that it’s best to put the registration button at the top of the page… But I’m not so sure any more, especially when it comes to e-commerce sites. Lena, my colleague, who is also the Mystery eShopper expert – she is testing e-commerce sites by acting like an ordinary customer – has shown me how important it can be to put valuable information at the bottom of the page.

Consider for a moment where you look for information that doesn’t belong to the actual product categories in a web shop. When you want to find information about customer service, share on Facebook, check in what city the company is situated – where do you look? That’s right, often at the bottom of the page. That’s why it’s a pretty good idea to put ”Sign up for our newsletter” right there.

Check this example:

It’s clear and neat. An icon and a button show what it’s all about. The design is fine without being overmuch.

This one is really spiffy, although the colors are quite dark which makes it a little difficult to find the register button. It’s placed at the bottom together with the categories.

Considering the footer itself I would recommend you to place the contact information as well as the categories there. If a great deal of the ”clicks” are there it might indicate that you haven’t given the kind of information the customers want and/or that they want some more information. So the statistics of the ”clicks” can help you making this right. If the majority of your customers click in the end of the newsletter for a certain category it might show that you should write more about that particular thing in the following newsletters. Here’s an example:

Below is an example of a footer from a restaurant showing where they’ve chosen to put information about opening hours and bookings. In addition they tell you about telephone number and the possibility to follow them on Twitter. It’s a good and informative newsletter where they also clearly tell the customers how much their meals are… Where do you think the customers look for the booking information? Of course, at the bottom of the newsletter.

Check your statistics! Isn’t it true that the fewest clicks are NOT at the bottom of the newsletters? And yet we often continue to put the least interesting information at the bottom…

Good luck with your ”feet”!

Sarah@@@@@