Most of us have heard the folktale, canada telegram data
Hansel and Gretel. Lost in the forest, the children use pieces of breadcrumb to mark their path back home. In web design, “breadcrumbs,” refers to a path – or breadcrumb trail – back to your website’s main content, named after the children’s path home.
They are useful on sites with a lot of content across many pages that are organized in a hierarchical way. It is less useful for simple websites that have fewer pages.
If your site has a lot of pages organized in a hierarchical manner, then breadcrumbs might be a good choice.
Though there are no hard and fast rules, the following sites often use breadcrumb navigation successfully:
- Ecommerce sites with many product listings
- How-to sites
- Educational sites
- Finance sites
These types of websites typically have a lot of content that is organized in a logical path from main pillar pages to more specific content, making a website breadcrumb strategy useful.
Breadcrumbs and SEO
A breadcrumb trail the purpose of differentiating products and services
can also boost your SEO. Google uses breadcrumbs to organize information and can also display your breadcrumb trail in search results. Breadcrumbs SEO helps Google understand and index your page more accurately, therefore serving searchers better matches.
The UX benefit will also ultimately help your SEO rankings because it should decrease your bounce rate and lead to longer customer interactions with your site.
When done correctly, breadcrumbs can improve the user experience of your website. There are some best practices to follow when designing your breadcrumb navigation.
People are comfortable with the familiar; it is conventional for breadcrumb navigation to be placed at the top of the webpage.
This makes intuitive sense because users typically scroll to the top of a page when they realize they want to be on a different page. Keeping the breadcrumb trail at the top reinforces the belief that users can find what they’re looking for easily.
Use Words or Phrases
Though it might seem creatively mobile list appealing to use images on a breadcrumb menu – just don’t. It’s confusing because images can be ambiguous. The “home” icon might be the one possible exception to this because it is so ubiquitous.
Stick to a single word or short phrase. For example – Home > Products > Men’s Clothing> Pants > Jeans is a logical breadcrumb format for a clothing eCommerce site. A website breadcrumb trail is not automatically the best choice for every site. If you have relatively few pages, a breadcrumb menu will unnecessarily clutter up your pages’ design.
Only use breadcrumb navigation if it actually boosts the user experience.
While UX design gets into the minutiae of what kinds of menus to use and when, it’s generally true that if your breadcrumb menu is only two or three steps long, you don’t really need it. You can simply use the main navigation header or even a hamburger menu just as effectively.
Don’t use lengthy phrases that won’t fit in a short row. For example, a step that reads “all men’s winter clothing sizes s-xxl” would be too long.
Don’t add in unnecessary pages thinking it will make your website look better – it will just make it look cluttered.
