Kenneth Dreyer

Have you ever seen this kind of navigation on a website?

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It’s called breadcrumbs. The term breadcrumbs comes from the tale of Hansel and Gretel where they wander through the forrest and leave breadcrumbs to find their way home. Of course, in the tale the breadcrumbs represent the actual path Hansel and Gretel took, but the breadcrumbs navigation we know from the internet does not. It just present the optimal path from the home archive to the current page in the hierarchy.

Breadcrumbs trails are used for navigation on websites. Breadcrumbs won’t help your users answer questions, since all it really does is to make it easier for your users to navigate around the page. Breadcrumbs are of course not a mather of website survival, since it’s only a secondary navigation aid, alongside with site maps. Most users use the primary menus and search box when navigating around websites, so these two are definitly more important for your sites usability. But from time to time, users turn to secondary navigation

Dispite breadcrumbs secondary status, they are still useful for various reasons:

• It shows the users their location on the website, helping them to understand where they are relative to the rest of the site.
• It’s good for SEO, since it’s provided links to other (and normaly related) parts of the website.
• It takes up very little space on the page.
• It’s become a common thing, so the users reconize it.

Personal experience with breadscrumbs

I recently added breadcrumbs to one of my one sites, who for now will remain anonymous, with very good results. Right after launching I added a measurement tool to it, to monitor the usage. People started using the breadcrumbs instantly, and what surprised me the most was that 40% of my users that where online on my site for more than 60 seconds and browsed more than three sites, used the breadcrumb to navigate. I also pulled a quick survey that lasted a day, asking a few questions about how my users liked the new function to the site, and people seemed very happy about it.

So people, if you run a site where navigation is important - get yourself a breadcrumb for your users.

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