In many cases, the footer is significantly less important than the rest of the page. In the case of small websites, it contains some copyright info and maybe who built the site. In the case of corporate sites like Prudential, it is the repository of social media links, corporate or legal navigation, and, more importantly, your legal disclaimer. If your social media links aren’t easily identified, then no customer comes to your marketing campaigns; if your legal and corporate navigation isn’t readily available, no one will find your “Help” or special notifications for residents of specific states; if your legal disclaimer isn’t legible (even though 99.9% of users won’t read it) you could find yourself behind a large wooden table in front of a judge. 

 

That’s just the business-related aspects of your footer. From the perspective of a UI designer, the footer, combined with your header, is the stage for all the information and data that lives on the page. On large corporate sites, there are times when there isn’t much information or images on a page - sometimes you aren’t selling a physical item, as in the case of Prudential - and you don’t want the header or footer to overshadow what’s on the page. They are both perfect opportunities to bring your brand to the pages where there might not otherwise be an opportunity (like an article page). 

 

At Prudential, the footer was handed to me when I walked in the door in April 2015. Just like the header, it was deemed a part of the page that was off-limits and couldn’t be redesigned. However, again, like the header, it was off-brand and broke many of the design guidelines that our team built later on. Analytics told us that folks just weren’t selecting any of the complete navigation found in the footer, which meant to the UX/UI team that they weren’t needed. It was oversized, had no social media links (they were to come later by C-suite request), and was a large mess.