Something that is starting to come into a main, is the site map footer. This is something that you’ll see as standard within a few years. Gone are the days where you throw some of the pages that don’t quite make it on the primary banner – you can now show every page on your site.
This is one of those win – win situations. If a client comes to your site and doesn’t want to find themselves at a dead end, they can check your pages before entering. For you, the business or individual, you are showing everything to the client. Even some things that might never be found otherwise. You are also simplifying their lives – a must for any website.
There are two forms of footer I have seen so far. One is on the BBC website, which gives you a heading and then enough information to show you that you’re on the right track.
The other is the Zyb footer, which shows you all pages in the site, please language options that are traditionally found towards the top right of a site. However, they should start to look at the design of how they show this information as it falls a long way behind other early adopters.
It’s also worth showing Dojo. They have decided to add the new style footer, which doesn’t look at all out of place on the site.
However, to reinforce this, they have also added a link on their primary navigation bar. Clicking this then shows you the full site menu, much like the footer. Personally I think this is a lovely addition if you have the space to add it.
