Best set of elements in footer?

Question

We're working on a side site for a project, which is based on WordPress. The site has posts, pages, photos and videos, most of this content is of informational nature. However, the site's intention is to SELL, thus it has CTAs (call to action) and a few products (think DesignModo or Envato only that with less than 5 products of much higher value). The information in this site is AMAZING, so it's not secondary at all, it has been carefully crafted in order to create a big and loyal audience

So it were just a marketing site, I'd use the footer as a "last chance", which is what we usually do for this kind of sites. For a WP informational site we'd use maybe a posts and pages list, maybe a small contact form.

But so far, I have seen it all: mega footers with lots of posts, twitter feeds, forms, CTAs, instagram posts, copyright, design notes, sitemaps, minimalistic footers, header replication... anything and everything, I've seen a lot of footer versions, but wondering: is there a set of recommended elements that I NEED to have? Specially in the context of a site like I'm describing, but general answers accepted as well.

Studies and research would be enormously appreciated!

Answer 1

Think of the footer of the screen as the last place a user will look for something if they can't find it in the rest of the page.

Get down the essential stuff 1st. contact details and email box to subscribe to the newsletter.

I've seen many cases where the most commonly used or looked for links are repeated on the footer. this is because when some users look for something on the website but they couldn't find it. they will reach the bottom before leaving.

Since you mention the site's intention is to sell, you can also include a recommendation feed with the hot products that sell a lot.