Look, I get it. You’ve probably spent weeks arguing over the photos on your homepage or what your 'About Us' page says. But I’d bet my last dollar you haven’t looked at the very bottom of your site in months.
Most business owners treat their website footer like the junk drawer in the kitchen. They just shove everything in there that doesn't fit anywhere else—copyright dates from 2014, a tiny logo no one can read, and maybe a link to a Facebook page they haven't posted on since the GFC.
That’s a massive mistake.
I’ve seen plenty of local Brisbane businesses turn their luck around just by fixing the basics. Your footer is the last thing people see before they decide to either call you or click away to your competitor. If it’s a mess, you’re literally watching money walk out the door.
Let’s talk about how to stop that.
Why the bottom of your page matters
People scroll. We’ve been trained by social media to keep flicking our thumbs until we hit the end. When a potential customer hits the bottom of your page, they’re looking for a reason to stay or a way to get in touch.
If they find a dead end, they leave.
We recently worked with a local service business that had a decent website, but their phone wasn't ringing as much as it should have been. When we looked at their footer, it was a ghost town. No phone number, no address, and a navigation menu that made no sense.
By making some small website movements to clean up that space, we saw their enquiry rate jump almost immediately. It wasn't magic; we just stopped making it hard for people to buy from them.
The 'Must-Haves' for a footer that works
If you want your footer to actually make you money, it needs to do three things: build trust, provide shortcuts, and make it incredibly easy to contact you.
1. Your Contact Details (The Big One)
This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised. Your phone number needs to be there, and it needs to be 'click-to-call'. If I have to highlight, copy, and paste your number on my iPhone while I’m standing on a job site, I’m probably just going to call the next guy on Google instead.Include your physical address too. Even if people don't visit your office, seeing a Brisbane suburb listed builds trust. It shows you’re a real local business, not some faceless lead-gen site run out of an overseas call centre.
2. A Simple Menu
Don't just copy your main menu. Use the footer to highlight the stuff people actually look for. - Your main services - Your service areas (list the suburbs you actually want to work in) - Your 'Contact Us' page - Your reviews or portfolioI’ve found that showing your work clearly in the footer can be the final nudge a customer needs to reach out. If they’ve scrolled through your whole page and they’re still on the fence, seeing a link to 'Recent Projects' can seal the deal.
3. Trust Signals
Are you a Master Builder? Are you RACQ approved? Do you have 500 five-star reviews? Put those logos in the footer. It’s the digital equivalent of having your certifications hanging on the office wall. It tells the customer, "I’m legit."A Real-World Lesson: The 'Junk Drawer' Fix
Let me tell you about a client of ours—a tradie business here in town. Their site looked okay, but people were landing on it and then bouncing off within seconds. One of the biggest issues was the footer.
It was cluttered with irrelevant links, the formatting was broken on mobile, and the contact form at the bottom didn't actually work.
Honestly? Most agencies would have told them they needed a $10,000 redesign. We didn't. We just cleaned up the mess. We fixed the broken links, made the phone number huge, and ensured the site worked perfectly on phones.
When you stop losing customers the moment they arrive, your marketing budget starts working twice as hard. Within a month, their cost-per-lead dropped because they weren't wasting the traffic they were already getting.
What to get rid of (The Rubbish)
If you want to make more money, you need to cut the noise. Here’s what usually needs to go:
Social Media Icons that lead nowhere: If your last Instagram post was a photo of your lunch in 2019, take the link off your site. It makes you look like you've gone out of business. Too much text: No one is reading a three-paragraph 'About Us' blurb in the footer. Keep it to one punchy sentence.
- The 'Web Design by X' link: Unless they’re paying you for the ad space, get rid of it. It’s an exit ramp away from your business.
Does your footer work on a phone?
This is where most Brisbane businesses fail. They check their site on a big iMac in the office and it looks great. But 70% of your customers are probably looking at you on a cracked iPhone screen while they’re on the bus or sitting on the couch.
If your footer links are so small that a person with normal-sized thumbs can't click them, you’re losing money. If the text is overlapping or the map doesn't load, you’re losing money.
It’s not about being 'fancy'. It’s about being functional. If your site is clunky on mobile, people assume your service will be clunky too.
How long does it take to fix?
This isn't a six-month project. A decent developer (or a savvy business owner) can clean up a footer in a few hours.
If you do it today, you could literally start seeing more enquiries by tomorrow morning. It’s one of the highest-ROI things you can do because it improves every single page on your site at once.
My honest take
Marketing isn't always about big, expensive ad campaigns. Most of the time, it's about fixing the leaks in your bucket. Your footer is often the biggest leak.
Go to your website right now. Scroll to the bottom. If you weren't the owner, would you know exactly how to contact the business? Would you trust them? If the answer is no, you’ve got work to do.
If you’re not sure where to start or you’re worried your site is driving people away, reach out to us at Local Marketing Group. We don't do fluff, and we don't do jargon. We just make sure your website actually makes you money.
You can find us here: https://lmgroup.au/contact