A website’s menu structure can grow into complex avenues of information. When your website’s navigation grows to a certain point it might have an appetite for breadcrumbs.
What are breadcrumbs?
A Breadcrumb is a special secondary navigation that can greatly enhance the user experience in navigating through the menu structure of a website. It also is a great visual aid indicating the exact location on the website.
Why do we call it a breadcrumb?
The breadcrumb comes from the tale of Hansel and Gretel in that two children drop breadcrumbs to form a trial to find their way back home. Just like in the story, breadcrumbs in websites offer people an easy way back to the starting point. Websites that use a large amount of content organized in a hierarchy.
When should Breadcrumbs be used?
Breadcrumbs provide no benefit to single-level websites with no grouping or hierarchy. A great way to determine if your website would benefit from breadcrumbs is to construct a map or diagram of your website’s navigation structure and analyze whether breadcrumbs would improve the user’s ability to navigate within the structure.
Breadcrumb navigation starts to be effective when the menu structure starts develops to sub menus to a subject and so forth. For example you might have a services page but within that page you might pages explaining the different services you provide.
Benefits to using breadcrumbs
Enhance the user experience and retain engagement
Users having a better way to navigate through complex structures will stay on your website longer. Longer website visits yield a better chance for conversion.
They don’t take up much space
Most breadcrumb designs are horizontally oriented with simple styles and don’t take up much space on a web page. They have little to no impact on content overload and performance and the benefits outweigh any negatives if properly used.
Search engine benefit
Search engines like Google love breadcrumbs. When they are correctly placed through the website Google will rewrite the search link information into a better navigation experience for the user.
See the example below where Google uses a breadcrumb to place Website Design page under the Services category:
Breadcrumbs can add that extra touch in navigation to your website. If you would like to add breadcrumbs to enhance your website experience contact Success Media Services. We can include breadcrumbs in your website or if you are looking for a fresh new design our website designs are custom to your needs. We are here to help.