At the bottom of every page sits the same strip: contact details, a few links, the imprint, the privacy policy and a line with a year. Because the footer appears on every page, it is, like the header, one of the parts of a website with the widest reach – and yet it often gets the least attention during the build. It either stays the way the template delivered it or grows over the years into a collection of links in which nobody finds anything anymore. Yet visitors go there with a clear purpose: for the phone number, the address, the imprint or the way to withdraw a cookie consent. This article shows what belongs in the footer of a small business, what only takes up space there, how it works when stacked on a phone, why the small print has to stay readable and which checks are due at the turn of the year – from the copyright line to the statement on consumer dispute resolution. What belongs at the other end of the page, on the first screen, is covered in Building a homepage: what belongs in the first screen.
What the footer does
The Nielsen Norman Group describes two typical situations in which visitors scroll all the way down.
Either they have not found what they were looking for further up, or they already know that the information they need sits at the end of the page. For the second group, the footer is a fixed point of reference: users will often go directly to the footer to find contact information or ways to reach customer support (Nielsen Norman Group 2019). The footer is therefore not a closing element that simply comes with the page, but a second navigation for questions that can come up at any stage of a visit: How do I reach the business? Who is behind it? What happens to my data? And because it does not get in the way of visitors who found their answer higher up, a tidy footer costs nobody any time.
Technically, the footer has its own element in the HTML standard. The footer element represents the footer of its section or, if there is no such section, the footer of the whole page; it typically contains information about authorship, links to related documents and copyright data (WHATWG HTML Standard). According to the same standard, contact information belongs in an address element. For people who use a screen reader, this is more than tidy code: the footer shows up as a separate region they can jump to directly. The Web Almanac found a footer element or the matching role on about 68 percent of the desktop pages it examined (Web Almanac 2025) – so roughly a third of pages do not offer this jump point.
What belongs in the footer
Short contact block
Phone number as a call link, email address and postal address, one line per contact route. Add a link to the contact page, where the form and directions are.
Short opening hours
A short version such as “Mon–Fri mornings, afternoons by appointment” and a link to the full hours. The weekly table with public holidays belongs on the contact page.
The services
For a small business, every service page; for a long list, the overview and the most requested ones. The label names the service the way customers ask for it.
Legal pages
Imprint, privacy policy and, where used, terms and conditions and the withdrawal notice. In the same place on every page and clearly labeled.
Accessibility and cookies
The link to the accessibility statement and the way back to the cookie settings, so that a consent can be withdrawn as easily as it was given.
Profiles
Links to the profiles the business actually keeps up. The name of the network appears as link text or as an accessible name on the link, not just as an icon.
In the short contact block, the format deserves a second look. On a phone, the number is only a way to call if it is set up as a tel: link. The address sits in an address element and is written exactly as in the imprint and in the business profile on the search engine. For accessibility, WCAG 2.2 added a criterion that applies to precisely this area: if help mechanisms such as contact details, a contact mechanism or a self-help option are repeated on several pages, they appear in the same order relative to the other page content, unless the user changes it (WCAG 2.2, Success Criterion 3.2.6, W3C). A footer that is built the same way on every page meets this along the way. A subpage on which the contact column is missing or sits somewhere else breaks the pattern.
For opening hours, the short version is the better choice. A full table with lunch break, public holidays and company vacation quickly grows longer than all other columns combined in a narrow column, and every change has to be made in several places. The short version answers the most common question – open today or not – and points to the contact page for everything else. How to keep hours in one place and show them the same way everywhere is described in Keeping opening hours and availability reliably current.
Legal pages: easy to recognize, directly accessible
The footer is the usual place for legal pages, and there is a legal reason for that.
Section 5(1) of the German Digital Services Act requires providers of digital services offered on a business basis, usually for payment, to keep their mandatory information easy to recognize, directly accessible and permanently available (Section 5 DDG). This includes, among other things, name and address, details that allow quick electronic contact including the email address and, where applicable, the register and registration number and the VAT identification number. A link labeled “Impressum” (imprint) in a footer that appears on every page is the common way to meet this. What exactly belongs in the imprint and how easy it has to be to reach is covered in Imprint and privacy policy: mandatory details in order; here the topic is the place where the link sits.
A similar standard applies to the privacy policy. Under Article 12(1) GDPR, the information on processing has to be provided in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form (GDPR). A link that is permanently visible at the end of the page covers the “easily accessible” part on every subpage. Next to it belongs an entry that many footers forget: the way back to the cookie settings. Article 7(3) GDPR requires that withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it (GDPR). Anyone who gave consent with one click in a banner should be able to take it back in a similarly simple way – an entry “Cookie settings” next to imprint and privacy policy is the obvious place. How the banner itself has to be designed is explained in the article on cookie consent under the GDPR.
- Imprint with the details required by Section 5 DDG, clearly labeled as such
- Privacy policy, reachable with one click from every page
- Terms and conditions and withdrawal notice, if the business uses terms or sells to consumers at a distance
- Accessibility statement, if the business falls under the German Accessibility Strengthening Act or offers one voluntarily
- Cookie settings as the last entry of the same row
- Mandatory information for certain trades, such as the initial disclosure of insurance intermediaries; how it is structured is shown in the article on the insurance broker website
Whether a link to an accessibility statement is mandatory depends on the offer. The German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) covers certain services for consumers, including e-commerce services. Anyone covered has to state, under Annex 3 of the act, in their terms and conditions or in another clearly perceivable way how the service meets the accessibility requirements (BFSG). Microenterprises that offer or provide services are exempt from these requirements (Section 3(3) BFSG); a microenterprise is a company with fewer than ten employees and annual turnover or an annual balance sheet total of no more than 2 million euros (Section 2 No. 17 BFSG). For everyone else, a link in the footer is an obvious way to keep such information clearly perceivable. And even without an obligation, a short statement shows what already works accessibly on the website and where feedback goes. More on this in the article on the Accessibility Act for business websites.
The link to the ODR platform can go
What does not belong there
The most common drift is the link graveyard. The Nielsen Norman Group describes the footers of earlier years as either small utility areas with little information or big dumping grounds for miscellaneous links (Nielsen Norman Group 2019).
In small businesses, such dumps usually grow step by step: a row of town names for the search engine, a second one with keywords, plus every subpage that did not fit at the top. For visitors, a column with dozens of town names is no help, and it does little for the link structure either, because a link that sits identically on every page creates no connection to the topic being read. How service pages are linked to each other in the text instead is described in Internal links: how customers and Google find your services.
Scroll table sideways
| Often found at the bottom | What goes wrong | Better |
|---|---|---|
| List with dozens of town names or search terms | Reads like text for the search engine and helps no visitor | Service area in one sentence, location pages only where there is real content |
| Full opening hours with public holidays | The narrow column gets long, changes have to be maintained twice | Short version plus a link to the contact page |
| Second call to action with a form | Competes with the call to action above and doubles required fields and privacy notice | One call to action above the footer, only the contact routes inside it |
| Seals and logos without proof | Whoever shows a mark has to be able to explain what it stands for and who awarded it | A few verified credentials with a link to the issuing body |
| Profile icons without names | A screen reader announces just a link, without a destination | Network name as link text or as an accessible name |
| Outdated mandatory notices | ODR platform, Section 5 TMG or an old year look neglected | Check once a year against the current legal situation |
The second call to action deserves an explanation because it is so widespread. Many templates place a “Request a quote now” block with a form directly above or inside the footer, often in addition to the call to action that already ends the page content. Visitors see two offers stacked on top of each other that want the same thing, and the second one reads like a repetition. A clear division of tasks works better: the page content ends with a call to action that matches the topic of the page, and the footer lists the contact routes without advertising again. The same applies to seals: a mark that nobody can explain costs trust instead of building it.
On the phone: stacked, not squeezed
On a smartphone, four columns turn into one long column. How important this view is shows in household equipment: at the start of 2023, 95.7 percent of private households in Germany had a smartphone (Federal Statistical Office).
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines require that content can be presented at a width of 320 CSS pixels without loss of information or functionality and without scrolling in two directions (WCAG 2.2, Success Criterion 1.4.10, W3C). For the footer, this means the columns sit below each other instead of side by side in miniature, and no row of links runs off the side of the screen. Once stacked, the order matters, because anyone scrolling down on a phone reaches the top column first.
- Contact with call and email links as the first block, each contact route as its own line that is easy to hit
- Opening hours as a short version with a link to the full hours
- Services, shortened to the overview and the most requested ones if the list is long
- Profiles with names, in one row with enough space between the icons
- Legal pages and cookie settings, each entry on its own line
- The copyright line as the closing element
On a phone, the size of tap targets also matters. In many footers, legal links sit in a single line, separated by vertical bars and set in small type. At level AA, WCAG 2.2 requires a target size of at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels for pointer input unless smaller targets have enough spacing between them (WCAG 2.2, Success Criterion 2.5.8, W3C). Legal links placed below each other meet this without any calculation if each line is at least 24 pixels tall as a tap target; profile icons need room around them as well. More measurements for type and tap targets on small screens are summarized in Mobile first: making your site easy to use on phones.
Contrast: the small print stays readable
In the footer, designers are most tempted to use light gray type on a dark background or mid-gray type on a light one, because the end of the page is meant to recede.
Yet low-contrast text is the most common automatically detected accessibility error on heavily visited websites: it was found on 83.9 percent of the one million most visited home pages, with an average of 34 distinct instances per home page (WebAIM Million 2026). The threshold is clear: under WCAG 2.2, regular text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background (WCAG 2.2, Success Criterion 1.4.3, W3C). This applies to the phone number and the imprint line just as much as to the headline in the page content. If you want a calmer footer, smaller type with sufficient contrast, more spacing and fewer entries get you there better than pale colors.
A second error concerns the profiles. Icons for social networks are often links without text: to the eye the symbol is clear, while a screen reader announces only a link without saying where it leads. Empty links were found on 46.3 percent of the home pages examined (WebAIM Million 2026). The fix is simple: the name of the network appears as visible text next to the icon or as an accessible name on the link. The same applies to a logo in the footer that links to the home page.
The three-question test on a phone
At the turn of the year: the copyright line and further checks
A line showing a long-gone year behind the copyright sign is, on many websites, the most visible sign that nobody has looked in a long time.
Legally, it is not a precondition for protecting the content: under the Berne Convention, copyright protection must not depend on any formality, it arises automatically (WIPO). The notice is therefore a hint, not an obligation, and anyone who uses it should keep it current. Two forms are common: the current year on its own or a range from the year of first publication to today. Both are fine as long as the last year is right. If you let the year be set automatically, it helps to know when “automatically” kicks in. On statically delivered websites, the number is usually created when the pages are generated. In XICflow, the closing line inserts the year when you publish. In the browser, the page script updates the line to the current year on load; in the delivered HTML, meaning in the source code and for programs that read a page without JavaScript, the year of the last publish remains. Measured on 19 October 2026 on the Café Nordlicht demo website with the clock set forward (XICflow): the HTML showed 2026, the browser with a date in January 2027 showed 2027. Publishing once after January 1, for example together with the new opening hours, brings both to the same year.
A second check is tied directly to the December 31 cut-off date. Under Section 36 of the German Consumer Dispute Resolution Act, a business that runs a website has to inform consumers in an easily accessible way to what extent it is willing or obliged to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer conciliation body. Exempt from this statement is any business that employed ten or fewer people on December 31 of the previous year (Section 36(3) VSBG). If the business has grown past this threshold during the year, the statement belongs on the website in the new year, usually in the imprint; a business that uses terms and conditions also has to provide it together with them under the same section. Both pages are linked from the footer.
- Copyright line: check the year or range, and with an automatic year publish once after January 1
- Count employees as of December 31: if there are more than ten, add the statement on consumer dispute resolution under Section 36 VSBG
- Adjust the short opening hours for the holidays and company vacation, and reset them afterwards
- Remove outdated mandatory notices: the link to the ODR platform and references to Section 5 TMG
- Go through the profiles and remove links to accounts that are no longer kept up
- Click every footer link once, especially after pages were renamed or deleted
Maintaining the footer in XICflow
In XICflow, the header, footer and navigation have their own area in the dashboard, “Header & Footer”, and are maintained separately per language.
Under “Footer columns” you create any number of columns with a “Column title” and links, for example for services and company. The column “Legal texts (footer column)” comes prefilled with Imprint, Privacy, Terms and Accessibility when you leave it empty; if you add your own entries, they replace the list completely, and the mandatory pages then have to be included. Profiles go under “Social links”; in the footer, the icons carry an accessible name, which is the name of the network unless you set your own label. All settings are described in the documentation on header and footer. Changed entries appear on the website with the next publish.
If you build the footer from blocks, use the “Legal links” block for the mandatory links. It takes its entries from the legal pages the website actually has, with translated labels and the right path per language, and places the cookie settings as the last entry of the same row (Legal links block in the documentation). Phone, email and address come from the website's business details and only appear in the footer when they are filled in, so no empty call link is created. Imprint, privacy policy and terms are generated in the respective language, and a contrast check based on WCAG 2.2 AA corrects theme text colors that are too weak when you save and reports any remaining violations as a notice before every publish.
The footer in one sentence