Do You Have a Fat Footer On Your Website? Ep 76

Embark on a journey with me as we unlock the secrets of streamlined website navigation through the innovative use of a 'fat footer.'

Reflecting on my own experience with mellermarketing.com, I reveal how this simple design element can improve access to essential services and resources on your website, ensuring everything you need is right at your fingertips.

No more endless clicking or scrolling; a fat footer could be the game-changer your website needs to enhance user interaction and satisfaction.

As we dissect the intricacies of responsive design for varied device screens, gain actionable insights from my corporate marketing history on creating a user-friendly experience that keeps visitors coming back for more.

A cluttered navigation menu is a quick way to lose your audience. That's why we're discussing the transformative potential of the fat footer; it's like a Swiss Army knife for your growing online space, offering a solution to the labyrinth of hidden submenus.

By concentrating your website's heart and soul into a visible and accessible area, we're paving the path to a more intuitive user experience. Join the conversation and see how this could apply to your digital presence.

Follow along on my website:
https://www.mellermarketing.com/ 

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15 LinkedIn Profile Tips for Coaches and Consultants

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This checklist provides 15 quick and easy ways to update your LinkedIn profile TODAY and help generate more leads for your coaching / consulting business.

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:01

You have a fat footer on your website. If you've ordered this term, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the section at the bottom of your webpage which contains many of the important links that your site visitors can access. In today's episode, I wanna talk a bit about fat footer and I wanna feel back the curtain a bit on why I recently added a fat footer to my website and why you might wanna do the same as well. First, just at a high level, I think we all know that websites change over the years, and nowadays all sites are designed to be responsive, which means your site will appear in a desktop view whether someone's visiting it from your laptop or from their desktop computer. You also have it in a tablet-friendly version as well as an immobile-friendly version, and a lot of times the websites will change format in sizing to accommodate those different dimensions. Now, one thing that does become a little bit tricky when you're looking at a desktop view of your website versus a mobile view is some of the links drop up and some of the areas of the website aren't nearly as accessible or easy to access in the mobile version as they are on the full desktop version, and you may even notice, even on your full desktop version. Nowadays we're using things like landing pages and friendly URLs that are redirecting people right into the heart of your website and folks aren't even starting necessarily at the homepage. They might be starting at a different page and, depending on the links that you have set up whether you have header menu links or footer menu links you might be driving them to other places on the site. And this actually came up in a conversation I was having with my intern. It's probably in the middle of last year and I was looking at my website and what links were available and accessible from the homepage and I realized that one of the links that I was frequently giving out to folks to visit it wasn't easy to find from my homepage and I said, well, let's create a fat footer section of the website. And this brings me back to my corporate marketing days when we'd work on website design and there's certain web elements that I felt were really were functional and also helpful for our website viewers. And they call it a fat footer because essentially what it is, it's on the footer, it's on the bottom of your webpage.

Speaker 1: 3:17

If you go to my website and kind of look along at this right now, you'll notice, at mellermarketingcom, right above the bottom menu of links, and I've got my copyright symbol, a link to log into my website for my members. I've got terms and conditions, earnings, disclaimer, all that good stuff, my social media icons I put those at the bottom because my goal is to keep people on the site longer, not necessarily to throw them to other places. So I've got those checked over there. But right above that I've got a section with let's see, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven links. I was double counting on there. I've got seven different section links and these are basically the main areas of navigation throughout my site.

Speaker 1: 3:57

So what I've done, with the help of my interns, is we've created these different sections of the website where you can easily access information about me, about my company, about my services and links that I want you to be able to access quickly. Access fast, if you will, right. So under each of the categories, I'll just walk through them one by one. The first category is called LinkedIn Services. So I want you to think about this If somebody is navigating through the website home page for your website, is it easy for them to get to your services page Now. You might have it linked in the very top menu, like I have. I have a LinkedIn services page from there, but that will rely upon them clicking on that link and then reading through the information on the page to find the service they're looking for. In my Fat Footer I have four categories that are listed one-to-one services, power hours, profile audit and VIP coaching. So either of those links will allow you to quickly click to go to those web pages where you can learn about those specific services.

Speaker 1: 4:55

I've also got a section on here called LinkedIn Help, and this is something that I created both for me as well as for my site visitors and almost as like a library of bookmarks things that I want to quickly access for my webpage, and if you click under that category, the one link under there is called Contact LinkedIn. I've got like just a list of things. I'm always and frequently referring to things like product contact, linkedin customer support. Is the LinkedIn website down? How to do LinkedIn running things through a LinkedIn post inspector if you have a social share image that isn't properly displaying? How to suggest improvements to LinkedIn, how to report non-employees or fake employees to LinkedIn. So this is just a list of things I'm frequently accessing, so I created the section a little bit for me selfishly, but also for my site visitors. Then, under other sections, I've got a company page strategy section. I have a presentation section where you can book me as a speaker, and I have a list of media clips from past podcasts and interviews and things like that. I've got a section on team training in here.

Speaker 1: 5:58

I've also got a large category that says Learn LinkedIn Online with Rhonda, and underneath here I list resources such as my blog, my YouTube channel, but also I have my online courses, bootcamp with Rhonda, the recipe for social selling. I've got my checklist that are listed in here as well. In addition, I have my upcoming events and webinars that are listed inside here. So a variety of different links are falling under that category. And then, finally, the final category. The seventh category I have on here is called About Rhonda Mellor in Mellor Marketing. So if you were to think about a major corporation and just about every major corporation has one of these about it or an about us link, and then underneath there you'll typically see things like company history might be bios of the executives, it might be their careers or their jobs page. So variety of different things that are listed under there. So I followed that same format, but I also added in things like online reviews. So if you want to find some reviews quickly for me, I have them bookmarked in that link. I also have a link to my book, social media pie.

Speaker 1: 7:01

I've also got a landing page that I created called special offers and partner discounts. Now on this page, I list any time I get an affiliate code to share with my network, or a discount code, something like that, I will put it on this webpage. I do this for me, selfishly, so that they're all in one place I can find them easily, but I also do this for you. So if you're poking around my website, you might stumble upon that, and if you sign up using one of my affiliate links, typically you get a discount, and then I get some type of an incentive as well. So it's a nice place to keep all of those handy. And then, finally, I have under the about section my subscribe pages. So whether you want to join my jobseeker list or my VIP email list, I've got them both categorically.

Speaker 1: 7:43

Now some websites may have this built in as a part of navigation, where these sections and links are automatically mapped. In our case, we actually had to build this using different column settings inside Kajabi is the name of my website, and what we did is we just created the section headings with bold text and then underneath we listed items in alphabetical order so that they're easily easy to scan through the list and find information inside there. And what I love about this is the fat folder. It makes it easy for me If I'm trying to find something quickly without having to navigate through my different menu options, or if I don't know the friendly or all. At the time I had it, it makes it really easy for me to find it. But, more importantly, it makes it really easy for my website visitors to find those links as well.

Speaker 1: 8:29

So now let's talk about you. Do you have a fat footer on your website? Maybe you don't have one yet, but this podcast is inspiring you to start to think about it, especially as your business grows and evolves and you have a variety of different links that are maybe not accessible from the homepage, but maybe under a sub menu and then another link underneath it. Try to think about would it be easier for your site visitors to create a fat footer to provide that easy navigation. Tell me what you think. If we're connected and linked in, send me a message there or on other social media platforms. You can certainly send me a message and let me know what you think. That's it for today. I look forward to talking to you again on a future episode. Have a great day.