What are breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs are a navigation aid that helps the user understand their location of a page and higher level pages. If you arrive at a page you do not want or get lost, breadcrumbs make it easy to find your way back or start over.

A breadcrumb navigation provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through, and shows the user's current location in a website.

Breadcrumb example

Here is an example on slscart.com site.

Home > kb > store > blog store

Explanation of each of the breadcrumb links.

The 'Home' is a link to slscart's home page.

The 'kb', found on the home page under 'Support', is a link to slscart's knowledgebase (used for support) which consists of several categories of support.

The 'store', one of the support categories, is a link to a set of articles about slscart's store.

The 'blog store', one of the store's articles, is a page outlining how blogging works in slscart.

Here is a link to show the breadcrumb:

https://www.slscart.com/kb/store/blog_store.php

Benefits

Breadcrumbs are a nice feature to use to reduce user anxiety and enhance usability.

Breadcrumbs provide SEO benefit.

Recommended practices

Using a '>' as a separator shows the relationship between higher level and lower level pages.

Breadcrumbs should be on top of the content.

Use contrast (such as a different color background) to make the breadcrumbs stand out.

Use small type to show they are not as important as primary navigation.

Boldface the last item (current page) shows the user where they are.

Enabling a breadcrumb in slscart

Click on adding breadcrumb capability to a template for an explanation of how to set it up in slscart.

***