Introduction

If you hire a really good web developer, then every single part of the site should be well-designed.

Time should therefore be spent coding and designing the site, so that your company has a well-designed website. Alternatively, you may well be reading this, as you’re thinking about tasking your PHP web developer, to redesign the footer, and use split testing to see if the design alteration, to the PHP, results in lower bounce rate?

Whatever the reason for wanting to redesign the footer, we have sat down with our web developers, and we asked them, which elements do we as web design company believe are crucial when designing a footer?

Now, don’t get us wrong, we can’t speak for all businesses, what one company has in a footer is likely to be different from another, every business is different, and we think the website should reflect your company’s unique personality, yet with that said, we can make some generalisations, as to what we think you may wish to include in your footer.

So whether you run a gin bar in Cardiff, a hairdressing saloon, or perhaps you sell used cars, and your thinking of having your web designers, redesign elements of your website, whether it be a WordPress site, Joomla or another type of CMS, this is the article for you.

What is a websites footer?

So, let’s say your looking for a local business, which sells organic coffee in Cardiff, yet is also a coffee shop, so you can get your coffee fix for the day, and sample the goods, before you purchase a massive sack of coffee, okay, so at the bottom of the website, normally where the companies address, phone number and let’s say social media icons are, lets say the companies Instagram account, or Facebook icon, or Twitter button is, well, this is the footer, its sometimes a different colour, so the web developers may say code site, so across the whole website, the footer is say black, so then all the social media icons, NAP information, is added to the footer.

How with some WordPress websites, it can be east to edit the footer?

Here at our agency, we simply think, that the WordPress sites that we build, we think are brilliant, not just because they look brilliant, but because, they have a Dashboard, which is called the WordPress Dashboard, now, this Dashboard, with the sites that we build, have the functionality so that the footer text can be changed, now you might be saying, well, why’s that even important… well, we will explain.

Let’s say you run a company, your business is in Cardiff Bay, yet, you decide to change units, so instead of being at one rented unit, in Cardiff Bay, you move around the corner, as such the address changes, so does the phone number, now, with some websites, built by some web designers, well, they do not allow for edits to be made easily, in matter of fact, with some websites, unless you have coding knowledge, its not possible, because they may not have a Dashboard, or admin area, instead a web developer is needed to make any wording changes.

However, with WordPress, things are so different, without any coding knowledge, so for example, you don’t need to understand PHP, you can simply log-in to WordPress, open the WordPress Dashboard, click Widgets, or another tab, then it can sometimes be as simple, as editing the address, and phone number in the editor.

NAP information

So what does NAP mean? And why is NAP important to have on your companies website?

Well, NAP simply means, name of the company, the companies address, and company phone number, its crucial to have, as if you talk to any good seo agency that’s worth their salt, well, they will tell you that NAP is important to improve your company’s local SEO.

So, when you do sit down with the web developers, or let’s say the person at the web design business that is managing the build of your new website, make sure, that you talk about where your companies NAP information is going to go, can it be indexed? And, also, if you do change say phone number, or address, can this be easily updated in the Dashboard?

If so, can the web designers offer training?

Cardiff or more than one location?

So, lets say you run a business that has multiple locations, for example, you own various bars and restaurants throughout Cardiff, so you need a web design business, that can design a website, but you may want to put the locations in the footer.

Why do this? Well, often the footer is used right across the entire website, so the design of the footer is consistent, now, when you talk to various seo companies, they will tell you, that its important to lower the bounce rate, now, when someone’s looking to book a restaurant, they may want to know quickly, where the restaurants address is, how far is it from them, they might be thinking, right?

Well, therefore, you can hire your web developers to add the restaurants address into the footer, so that, the address is easily found, so this is helping your customers, by clearly stating where your restaurants and bars, across Cardiff are, this might just be one way, that your digital marketing agency uses to lower the bounce rate on your site.

May want to include recent blog posts?

Let’s say you hire a marketing agency here in Wales, and lets say you sell mountain bikes, you may have invested a lot in content marketing, reviewing new bikes, electric bikes and also mountain bikes, so one way to help promote your most recent blog posts, is to hire a web designer, which can add a blog post feed, into the footer.