They are little more than strings
of labels that link to their respective sections and present a rough directory path, starting
with the homepage on the far left and ending with the current destination on the far right.
The idea behind this supplemental navigation is twofold:
1. It helps users understand where they are in the structure of the site.
2. It allows them to jump backward to a previous section.
A study conducted at Wichita State University showed that the use of breadcrumb trails,
when available, constituted 6 percent of users??™ total navigation activity.10 (It??™s also interesting
to note that 40 percent of the test subjects used breadcrumb trails five or more times
during the course of the test.) While the Back button garnered more attention (31 percent
of all navigation activity), the study proved that when looking to retrace their steps, people
will employ breadcrumb links if they are available.
Breadcrumbs are typically displayed at the top of the page (near the header) as a horizontal
hierarchy, like so:
Products ?¤ Cars ?¤ Nissan ?¤ Altima ?¤ 2006
In addition, there are two different types of breadcrumbs:
Path breadcrumbs: These dynamically display the links the user chose to arrive at
the page, mimicking the browser??™s history-keeping and Back button functionality.
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