BradyID Footer

When I started, the site still had a double-stacked footer with 7 total columns of text-links cluttering the bottom of every page.  For many links, it was the only obvious way to get to those pages due to them not quite fitting other silos. 

It was my personal vendetta to clean it up and make it look and work better. 

Researched via Analytics, mocked up in Sketch, and tested with UsabilityHub.

In Need of Simplification

The very first thing we did was to use multiple analytics tools to find which links were valuable, which were clutter, and which were the only one of their kind. Valuable links either stayed, or were moved to a higher prominence location in the header navigation. Clutter was cleaned up. Anything that was “one of a kind” was moved somewhere else and ideally linked in multiple spots to keep it from only being discoverable in this one place on a deeply nested page (eg: added to the menu, but also to pages where it made sense in context). 

While at it, we also updated our social icons to follow their most up to date brand standards, cleaned up some of the legal text, and made sure it responded nicely on tablet and mobile. 

bradyid_footer-old bradyid_footer-new2

Shorter, Simpler, Better

Not only did we gain back a huge chunk of space from the redesign (as seen in the comparison slider above), but we also increased click-through rates on semi-unique links that remained in the footer, and have seen more users going to the main navigation categories instead of scrolling to the bottom of our page to get where they need.

So much better. 

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