Breadcrumbs are a tool to help users navigate your website and especially to help them when they get lost. They are a secondary navigation tool (your site menu and page links will usually take pride of place), they are small, easy to implement and inexpensive, while the majority of users expect to see them when they are on a web page.
You typically see a breadcrumb navigation aid below the title bar of the web page and it will look something like this:
Home > Category > Sub-Category > Topic
e.g. Home (Product Range) > Computers > Laptops > Laptop Batteries
The last entry on the breadcrumb will refer to where you actually are within the website, while the previous entries represent the hierarchy which takes you to the home page.
You can reverse yourself out of a particular page of the website by simply clicking on one of the earlier breadcrumb listings, so for instance, if you find you are in “Laptop Batteries”, but are in fact looking for “Desktop Accessories”, clicking on “Computers” should take you back to where you can find the right path down to what you need. You can of course hit “Home” and get back to the homepage directly, or any other step on the breadcrumb trail which let’s you skip intermediate pages.
Different Breadcrumb Types
There are three different types of breadcrumb used for website navigation:
- Path – these breadcrumbs show the actual path a user has taken to get to the web page and it will change if there are multiple ways of entering the web page. For this reason they may be referred to as Dynamic Breadcrumbs – they should not be used on your site for reasons we shall see later;
- Location – these are static and simply provide a hierarchical reference showing where the page is located within the website. They may also be referred to as Static Breadcrumbs and are the type of breadcrumb a website should utilize as opposed to dynamic ones; and
- Attribute – these may be dynamic or static breadcrumbs, but they also provide information on the current web page.
Breadcrumbs are Widely Accepted by Users as Website Navigation Aids
A significant advantage of using breadcrumbs is that they are popularly understood – virtually every web user understands what they are and how they work. They are an unofficial standard for web navigation, even though they are duplicating the functionality of your web browser with its back and forward arrows.
Web design cliques may denigrate the use of breadcrumbs because of this duplication of functionality, but their view doesn’t count! If your visitors like using breadcrumbs, then listen to what they want to help them navigate your website and the vast majority of users like them. The public gets what the public wants in this case.
In addition, breadcrumbs show a user where they are at any point within the site hierarchy in a very easy to follow format – a universal format you will need to follow but this is simple – it’s a single text line with each page separated by an identifier, usually “>”.
The breadcrumb is there as a constant guide companion, which makes them more relevant than a sitemap which requires the user to jump between pages to see where they are – the breadcrumb is right there on the screen.
Limitations on the Use of Breadcrumbs
There are some instances where using breadcrumbs are not appropriate. A good example is where you have a very content rich website, perhaps extending to hundreds and thousands of pages and of necessity, you will not be able to categorize all of the pages. In this case, using a breadcrumb approach is not going to help a user very much when it comes to finding their way around the site. A site search engine will be better for helping users get to where they need to be in such a case.
A breadcrumb is best used when it demonstrates hierarchy and not the user’s history. Where the history is displayed, i.e. the path taken by the user to get to where they are at, then the user can quickly end up going around in circles. If breadcrumbs are only to be used for showing the site hierarchy, then the website needs to be able to be suitably categorized as we have discussed earlier. For this reason it is recommended that only static breadcrumbs are used, which reflect the page’s place in the site hierarchy instead of the user’s page history.
Takeaway
Breadcrumbs are universally recognized and accepted by users and they are simple to use and very cheap to implement. Breadcrumbs should only show the hierarchy of the site and where the user is in relation to it – this means static or location breadcrumbs should be used, not dynamic breadcrumbs which give the user’s history.
Breadcrumbs make navigating a website easier and help users who get lost within the site, or land in a section of the website which is not relevant to their needs. There are occasions where breadcrumbs are not appropriate, such as very large websites which do not lend themselves to being categorized in a simple fashion and so a site search engine may be more appropriate but, for most websites breadcrumbs should be utilized.
