The practice of displaying bread crumb links on every page of a website gained popularity ever since Yahoo started adding them to their directory.

Bread crumbs represent the path of where you are coming from and where you are going within a website. They allow the web visitor to always know where they are within your website and most importantly to jump to previously visited web pages,

Several years ago, the Wichita State University revealed that bread crumbs account for 6% of total navigation. Although the “Back” button was considerably more (about 30%) the study showed that people tend to use the bread crumbs more (if they are available) in order to retrace their steps.

Web Bread Crumbs

Usually you’ll see bread crumbs displayed on the top of a web page, often under the horizontal menu. Their structure is horizontal and looks like this:

Home Page > Services > Logo Design > Logo Portfolio

Bread crumbs can be found as 2 different types:

1. Hierarchical bread crumbs
   As shown in the example above, they are independent of the way the web visitor reached your website and landed on a particular page.
2. Path based bread crumbs
   The links are dynamically created through programming and are displayed mirroring the browser’s history or the “Back” button functionality.

Bread crumbs are useful especially in complex websites that are several levels deep. I recommend them in all types of websites regardless of their complexity because of 2 reasons:

1. No matter how simple your website is, by using bread crumbs it will still show your web visitors that you care about them on how they navigate the site.
2. You’ll have the opportunity of including several keywords that will appear above the fold on every page of your website and that’s a good thing – just ask Google.

 Claudiu Geanta is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Design by Satori Inc. & Satori CG Inc.. He helps businesses promote their presence on and off line. He is also an accomplished web designer, book writer and photographer. You can follow him on Twitter.
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