Breadcrumb trails, those links you see at the top of the page that often start with text such as, “You are here:”, provide a number of benefits to users and website owners alike:

• They act as a signpost to where the user is within a site. This is particularly beneficial to users that arrive on your site via a search engine. The breadcrumb trail allows these users to identify what section of your site that they are in, as well as providing a quick preview of the type of content the site holds.
• Breadcrumb trails also allow users to move back to any page in the trail with a single click, rather than multiple clicks of the browser back button.
• They also provide some SEO benefits and Google is now including breadcrumb trails in their search results.

The name “breadcrumb trail” suggests a path that the user has taken to reach their current location (think Hansel and Gretel) and this is certainly true when considering a very linear user experience. However, that linear experience is no longer truly representative of the way in which many users interact with websites, particularly content rich sites where users have a high level of engagement.

Consider the following example, a user arrives at the home page of a news website, they click on the primary navigation option Entertainment, then a sub-heading Movies and then an article. Up to this point the breadcrumb serves the users well in reflecting the journey.

It is quite likely that in order to increase the amount of time that the user spends on the site, in our example above, users are encouraged to click on some form of related content (e.g. blog, video, image slideshow). Typically, this content is located in a different section of the website which results in a resetting of the breadcrumb trail. This suggests that despite its name, the breadcrumb trail is actually intended to demonstrate the location of content within a site’s IA, rather than how the user has arrived at a particular page (insert image).

What does all of this mean for the implementation of the breadcrumb trail, and recommendations we make as user experience professionals? Although our experience suggests that only a minority of users will use breadcrumb trails we still feel that they have a role to play on a website; however the definition and application of that role is a lot more ambiguous than it used to be. What do you think?

There are an increasing number of websites dispensing with a link to “Home” in their primary navigation in favour of the company/site logo linking to the homepage. The logic behind this approach appears to be the belief that all users understand that the logo provides a link back to a website’s homepage and to save space.

Our experience of observing user behaviour suggests that a significant number of users will fail to return to the home page when the site logo is the only means of doing so (aside from the browser “back” button of course). Using the logo as a link to the homepage is not a bad thing; we actually recommend it especially as it is optimal from an accessibility perspective. However, it should not provide the sole means of navigating back to home.

It is difficult to argue that reserving a permanent spot for “Home” in a website’s primary navigation takes up an unreasonable amount of real estate which could be used for other navigation options. After all it is only four characters and “Home” plays a crucial role in in-site navigation, with many users treating a website’s homepage as a base which they return to between tasks.