Breadcrumbs in a site

Hi,

I’ve never been a big fan for breadcrumbs in a website, at least a 3 level website. For sites like amazon, this forum it is useful but what about all the other more simple websites?

Hi Cipa,

I have similar feelings about using breadcrumbs, particular with 2-3 levels. Sometimes it feels like it is wasted in terms of someone actually using it, particularly if it is near the ’home’ button the main navigation. Often it’s the difference between clicking the ’home’ link on the crumbs and ’home’ on the main nav (or clicking the logo) and perhaps this isn’t really that useful – I’m not sure.

I think in some way it comes down to the design and the parent-child content relationship. Here is a recent example of how I implemented breadcrumbs. In this case people do not need to use the drop down on the main navigation primarily and can quickly get to the parent page through the breadcrumbs. It also shows through the triangle shape the current (active) page.

The structure here is:

home -> service
home -> service -> book online
home -> service -> book online -> payment
home -> service -> book online -> confirmation

Hey,

Good question.

I use breadcrumbs whenever there is some sort of classification of products.

So if we are speaking about a Book Store, whereas Books are classified I think that it is useful for the client to easily identify in which section he is:

Book Store > Computing > Programming (and you get list of programming books) or Book Store > Computing > Hardware (and you get list of books on hardware) or Book Store > Hobbies > Gardening (and you get list of books on gardening)

Besides being usable by the visitors, it’s also more (at least somewhat relevant) internal links, which could help your site being indexed properly.


We use breadcrumbs on websites that have three or more levels on at least some pages.

I think it really depends on the site. I like breadcrumbs that tell me where I am in a process (e.g. checking out in an e-commerce site). They can also be useful when you come into a site from a Google link and want to go up, but not all the way up. They’re immensely handy, too, on some auto parts sites, when you want several different parts for the same car and don’t want to go through the whole process of specifying the make, model, and year for each part.

I believe that they can help for internal linking structure a lot and have used them on a number of sites. However, a lot of the time they look quite bad or are simply unnecessary - especially if you have a navbar or something similar. For very large websites with lots of products and categories they do make perfect sense however.

really sorry for being thick, but what are breadcrumbs in a site?
Thanks in advance

see the image above

Breadcrumbs can be really useful for users as it lets them know exactly where they are on the site. So I would say definately put them, they can also help with some SEO factors.

I heard they are useful for indexing (search engines). Sometimes, the site alsom looks more professional, depending on the design of course...