3 Ways To Customize Your Squarespace Footer

When you think about your website you focus on things like sidebars, home pages, and showcasing your services or offering. An underutilized place in most websites is the footer.

The footer is way, way, way down there at the bottom of each page. Today I want to show you ways to customize your footer in Squarespace and make sure it’s working for your business.

First things first: decide what your goal for your footer is going to be. Are you trying to recruit clients, promote your lead magnet, grow a social media following, or something else? I think your footer can do all of that (and more) if you design it well.

My footer houses a secondary navigation, because it’s important to me to have a clean cut top navigation with very direct purposes. But, I have a lot more going on than just my services or my blog and I want those things to be accessible from any page, so I manually created a secondary navigation. Some templates in Squarespace allow for an automatic secondary navigation (you’ll see the option in the pages panel), but if yours does not you can create links manually using a text block. The only other purpose my footer has is to connect with people via social media.

You might wonder why I don’t have a lead magnet in my footer. The truth is: I have a lot of lead magnets and it’s heavily promoted on my home page and my blog (my two most popular pages), so I didn’t feel the need to include it again. Plus three of those links down there lead to opt-ins and one leads to a sales page. Your design and user flow might work differently, but keep in mind as a general rule: if someone’s made it that far down, they’re going to be interested in your opt-ins or offerings.

Squarespace makes it incredibly simple to update your footer, all you need to do is hover over the footer area and an option to edit will pop up. Clicking that will highlight that area and gray-out the rest of the page, so you know where you are working. Then, using that same teardrop tool we talked about yesterday you can start to add blocks and elements to complete your footer.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

There are a few ways you can add social media to your footer. Once you click that teardrop shaped tool a box will appear (same as editing a page or a blog post) and have options for blocks to add. The last area in this box is social media related. My footer includes the regular social links block that pulls the information I’ve previously connected in a neat and orderly way.

If you wanted something more detailed, you could easily connect a Twitter or Instagram feed by clicking either of those two options. There are some customization available for how those pieces of information show and like any element you can drag to resize (and see the results in real time). It's a popular look to have the Instagram feed stretch the width of your website, which is a nice idea if you have a beautiful Instagram to showcase.

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POPULAR OR RECENT POSTS

Another option for your footer would be to use the summary block we discussed yesterday and showcase some of your popular posts or recent posts. This would be a great option to drive traffic to blog posts, especially if your blog posts are important to getting customers, clients, or subscribers.

Use the summary block to drive traffic to your old posts in #Squarespace [Tweet That!]

I like this solution rather than an obvious opt-in form because it allows visitors to access something of yours for free first and see if they like your content and want to subscribe from within the blog post instead. It helps you to make sure your leads are warm leads that connect with you, versus a random visitor.

To save space in the footer I would recommend only showing the blog post title and graphic, but turning off the excerpt or any metadata. Footers should not be overwhelming or too busy, but rather like a nice piece of chocolate after dinner.

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YOUR SIGNATURE OPT-IN

If you have a main lead magnet or opt-in that is very popular or successful, I would consider including that in the footer. Something like Claim Your Clients would do well in that area. Why should it be popular or successful? So you can include some sort of blurb that says, “Join over 500 people who have already started doing XYZ” or something along those lines.

I say that because if someone is opting in through your footer they might have not read multiple blog posts yet and understand that you are an expert with real value. So, use that opportunity to prove it even more by stating some statistics or social proof or real results that come from using your opt-in.

If you have multiple opt-ins, like me, it’s important that the one in your footer is your main opt-in that drives your business (whether it be a funnel or a warm lead list for a product) versus an opt-in that is simpler/only created for a blog post. You want this to be a “wow” moment and really knock the socks off whoever subscribes.

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Create Optimized + Shareable Pins For Pinterest

Pinterest is the favorite tool for many bloggers and online business owners. It’s a powerful social media platform that works as a search engine and drives people to your website – if you create the appropriate graphics and pins.

In The Shop (launching September 1) you can get high quality but affordable templates for blog graphics that will work amazingly on Pinterest. Follow this guide with your new templates to create Pins that will boost your blog views and make Pinterest your number 1 referral site in no time! 

In the meantime, here’s the anatomy of a perfect Pinterest pin in five easy steps.

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VERTICAL

First and foremost, make pins vertical. Think about how you actually use and view Pinterest: it’s a grid that you scroll down through. Vertical images take up more real estate in that regard and will be seen for much longer of a ‘scroll’ than horizontal ones. The same applies with using Pinterest on your phone or tablet. Vertical = better.

The width of a pin is best at 735 pixels, though the height can be whatever you choose (most people’s come in somewhere around 1100px, though I know there are some pins that are much longer). In The Shop I’ve created templates to get you started creating your own Pins that have varying lengths so you can test out what works best for you. ** Updated in 2018: the new recommended size is 600x900 pixels!

Action Item: if you have old pins circulating on Pinterest that are more horizontal than vertical, take time to create new images for them and start getting those out there too. It’s definitely okay to have multiple pins (and images) per blog post, so unless your old pins are drastically underperforming, I’d leave them up. Chances are your newer, more optimized pins will start getting more re-pins, likes, and click-throughs a lot quicker and the older pins will start to fade away.

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LARGE READABLE TEXT

In the actual Pinterest image you create the text should be large and readable, to quickly gain attention of someone scrolling through their feed. What I mean by this is:

leave the curly, swirly, elaborate fonts alone and pick something that's easy to read for Pinterest [Tweet That!]

In my own graphics I like to emphasize parts of the title of blog posts by bolding a portion of the title that is most important (like the words ‘business’ or ‘branding’). I also include a small detail that shows if there is some sort of free download, like a worksheet or checklist, to gain attention and build the probability of a click-through. 

From a branding standpoint, I need to make sure I take a moment and tell you to use consistent fonts, colors, and styles on your graphics so that you begin to make a cohesive presence on Pinterest and become quickly recognizable by someone seeing multiple pins from you.

Action Item: Look through your old pins and evaluate if the text is large and readable or if you need to create newer, more legible graphics.

Are your current pins all unified enough that they’re obviously from the same blog or business? [Tweet That!]

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USE RICH PINS

Rich Pins are an awesome and easy way to direct more people to your website and give a more polished, professional vibe on Pinterest. What are rich pins? They’re the small details you see beneath pins (you’ll see them beneath my pins) that include your website name and favicon, as well as the blog post title and description.

Rich pins are awesome from a visual standpoint, but they also make it easier to get noticed during a scroll, which in turn can lead to more click-throughs and traffic to your blog. You’ll end up taking up more vertical space and having more of an opportunity for key-word rich descriptions.

Action Item: Get rich pins set up on your blog ASAP. Squarespace makes this SO easy. After you’ve connected your Pinterest account under settings>connected accounts you can head over to this validator and put in one of your blog posts to enable it. No code necessary!

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SEO-FRIENDLY DESCRIPTION WITH CTA

Besides the actual pin itself you want to spend time crafting a great description that is SEO-friendly (Pinterest is a search tool first and foremost) and includes some sort of “Call To Action” to help people want to click through.

I usually say something like “Click through to read the five ways to best optimize your Pinterest graphics (and get the free download)” at the end of the description because that’s straightforward and has some more key words in it. I’ll include my website name and small mention of what I do (like “Branding Design + Strategy”) just to set people up for what they will see when they travel to my site.

As far as the rest of the description, it’s usually some portion of the beginning of my blog post, because I’ve already worked to get some key words in there. I don’t try to make it more work on myself – work smarter, not harder right?

Action Item: Go through old blog posts and update the description that will show up when someone pins your blog post (In Squarespace it’s either the caption you use, or the “filename” field if you don’t use captions). That way, from here on out anytime someone pins your blog post they are adding your new, updated, awesome description. If you are feeling really productive then go and update some of your pins on Pinterest (I’d start with the ones from your website’s content board, since that’s probably where a lot of re-pins come from).

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MAKE SURE YOUR LINK WORKS

Lastly, the best-optimized pin is a pin that actually leads to the blog post you say it will. Nothing makes me sadder than thinking I am about to read some awesome post I found on Pinterest to find it only leads to www.whateverwebsitetheysaid.com/blog and shows their latest blog post instead. What a buzzkill!

Branding is all about creating an experience and that’s a bad first impression that someone could have with your business. Make a habit of double checking yourself when you pin from your website!

Action Item: On your website’s content board, at least, go through and check your pins and make sure all the links are correct. If they aren’t, take time to edit and correct the link!

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