Day 24: There’s been a lot of recent chatter about website footers. And rightfully so. If you sectioned off a web page, there’d be navigation (unless, of course, you’re one of those people that places the global navigation in the footer), content, and the footer. But what’s intriguing to me about the footer is it’s the devil’s playground, a den of thieves, the underworld of a website’s underbelly.

Read the conversations on the world wide Internet about the trickery, the shortcuts, even the potential link cheating that people promote, and you’d think the website footer was the equivalent of the famed Hole-in-the Wall where all the bank robbers camped-out in the late 1800s. But it’s not, and it shouldn’t be looked at in that regard. Add to that the opinions of some who believe you should start your website design and development process at the footer, and you have a three-ring circus on your hands.

Let’s take first things first. For those who believe you start at the footer, you don’t; this isn’t a jungle-gym where the starting line is the ground. It’s a website and there is no substantiated research and no eye-tracking findings that report that a web visitor starts at the footer. I’m all for loading the footer with the typical and anticipated information including, but not limited to contact information, email sign-ups, policy statements, copyright, office locations, site map or navigational links, and of course, the always exciting Compensation Disclosure if you’re in the insurance trade.

But how much further do we really need to go? I’ll ask this question: if you had a single, overwhelming and compelling sales proposition, and you knew that the chances were that your web guest would only see it once, is the footer where you’d stick the proposition? I hope not. I’ve seen more links in footers than Oscar Mayer has Smokies. I’ve seen as much design in a footer as there is in the Communication Arts Annual.

But my sense is this – if you’re in professional services or cultivating business in a B2B environment, you’re better off playing it right down the middle. Use the expanded footer where it’s genesis falls firmly in our willingness to scroll, but don’t think of it as a salad bar either, there’s only so much room on your plate.