Breadcrumbs commonly mean the dried slices of bread which are grinded for use in all sorts of foods i.e. patties, fried and baked foods. This post is certainly not going to make anyone think about food. Rather, the term bread crumbs also applies to web design as it is a crucial element in web design.

Breadcrumbs are important in web design. A lot of websites have a breadcrumb trail, even though visitors may have not seen them. It basically comprises a series of links on a web page showing users and website visitors where they are present on a website.

They are the reason website navigation is made easier as users can easily trace their trail back to the website’s home page. THen they can also see other similar web pages as well as where they have been on these web pages too.

Let us now read more about them.

What are Breadcrumbs and what is Breadcrumbing?

This is the practice of adding a trail of links in a website (for users to keep track). The term itself is derived from the famous fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” where children find their way back home through a trail of breadcrumbs.

Similarly, the breadcrumbs a website has can take users easily back to a homepage as it is a trail. This trail can lead them to other web pages. Websites that use breadcrumbs will show them at the top of the web page.

Depending on the type of breadcrumb trail present, these links are often listed in an orderly fashion. This even makes trails when users click on web pages. They hence can see the pages they visited including the age they are on currently.

Types of breadcrumbs being used

Here are the most common kinds of breadcrumbs in use, as determined by professionals from a web design company Dubai:

Attribute-based 

Attributed based Breadcrumbs are often present on eCommerce sites. They are used for describing products by means of a refined search. These breadcrumbs display different features of products any customer searched for. 

Here is an example. if people search for men’s Jeans in XXL, it would look something like this:

“Jeans>Men’s>XXL”

These kinds of breadcrumbs describe features of products website visitors are currently seeing. Because of this, they are not in any specific order or manner. They would hence be listed as 

‘Jeans>XXL>Men”

Website users and visitors usually select these attributes in a direct manner during their search for these products on any eCommerce site.

These kinds of breadcrumbs often show the narrowness of the search based on what users chose. The more features a user chooses,  the longer the breadcrumb trail will be. 

Hierarchy-based 

These kinds of breadcrumbs are exhibited in a specific manner which helps users navigate the website with ease. THeir other name is location-based breadcrumbs and they show  links that list various pages on a website in a proper hierarchy. They exhibit the way a website is structured. Suppose a person is looking for iPhone chargers, here is what the trail will look like:

Home>Technology>Smartphones>Accessories>iPhone Chargers

Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs make a lot of sense especially when they display a category followed by subcategories. At times they use attribute based features. Users and website visitors alike can follow these breadcrumbs back in an orderly fashion to the website’s main page. In Fact, they can even go to more general pages using this very trail.

In this category, web pages can also be thought of as levels in a video game. It would not make much sense to jump from level one to level five without going through levels two, three and four. 

Path-based

Website visitors and users alike will occasionally encounter path-based breadcrumbs. Their other name is history-based breadcrumbs because of their modus operandi based on users’ web search and browsing history. 

These breadcrumbs work almost in relation to the ones based on hierarchy. Yet, they show the entire path of a user throughout the whole site.

Path based breadcrumbs show users exactly what they have selected to reach their destination on a website. They usually aren’t as useful as the previous two because they do not encourage users to visit other web pages.