Why fat footer

Learn how to apply psychology to design engaging online user experiences , that make people take action. Take the course. Create an account to upload screenshots of great design. Why should I create an account? Mix existing screenshots on UI-Patterns.

Sign up or Sign in. Toggle navigation 0 selected. Make your own screenshot collections. Sign in or Create an account. Add selected screenshots to Add to collection. Create new collection. Design Patterns Screenshots Blog Shop. Fat Footer Design Pattern. Home Link Accordion Menu. Alternate titles : Sitemap Footers.

Problem summary Users need a mechanism that will enable them to quickly access specific sections of a site or application bypassing the navigational structure. Use to shortcut an otherwise hierarchical structure of a website. Use when there are specific pages or functions that are more frequently used than others parts of the website.

The positive of this example is that the links are nicely organized and distinguished by labels which speak directly to the different target personas: evaluators, existing clients, web agencies representatives etc. This grouping approach helps visitors quickly scan trough the labels and find their positioning in the website. Another example of a fat footer, directly from here at Progress , which includes: highlighted links with short descriptions, quick links, navigation options about the company and a CTA to a contact form.

The footer is well organized and easy to scan. The hierarchy of the navigation options is obvious. It contains only the information that most website visitors expect to see in this particular place:. If we assume that we have exposed the most important topics with further links in the content of a webpage, and we have provided the desired CTAs that point the user to the desired website journeys, then it is better to keep the footer simple to avoid confusion.

By doing this we keep users away from any distractions. Here is an example of one really compact footer. It contains only a couple of links, which users expect to always be able to find at the bottom of a webpage.

Included are also some of the most important links from the top navigation. If you are about to create a new website journey and you are wondering how to organize your footer, you might consider this checklist of questions before starting:.

Are you a seasoned web developer, or just starting your journey of building better websites? We have designed a free course to help developers who have little to no experience in developing against Sitefinity to get up to speed. Sign up here. SSO is an authentication process that allows you to access multiple services and applications with one username and password. For government Information and communication technology Communication and publishing Website and digital publishing Website standards, guidelines and templates Consistent User Experience Standard Module 2: Screen layout Module 2: Checkpoint 25—Fat footer.

Print Module 2: Checkpoint 25—Fat footer Conformance: Optional Mandatory if used Requirements Agencies may display a fat footer that consists of the main sections of the site and any other important links. Benefits of conformance Fat footers can be a way to encourage users who have just finished reading content to continue interacting with the site. The fat footer has become, over time, a functional space.

Though the final content decisions should come from user research and usability testing, CBJ Digital Blog offers a great starting place with their list of key elements of a fat footer. The article recommends making use of whitespace, and separating the footer visually from the rest of the page.

That said, he pulls apart three pros and three cons to the fat footer, which was at that time starting to grow in popularity. One observation Sukyer adds to the fat footer discussion is the space for creativity that fat footers can provide.

This article by Ben Still, published on the Redant site, takes a critical look at the trend and offers a variety of alternative solutions that might offer the same benefits with none of the potential negatives.

For example, Still reminds readers that too many links in the footer can come across as spam to site crawlers.