In the context of website development, "breadcrumbs" refer to a user interface (UI) navigation pattern that provides an additional layer of context and assistance for users by displaying a trail of hyperlinked navigational elements. Breadcrumbs represent a hierarchical structure of a website and offer users an easy way to navigate back to previous pages. This UI navigation pattern significantly contributes to enhancing user experience (UX) by facilitating smooth and efficient navigation through an application, and ultimately, promoting user satisfaction.
Breadcrumbs derive their name from the popular fairytale "Hansel and Gretel," where the children drop breadcrumb trails to find their way back home. In a website development context, this pattern enables users to visually trace their steps back to the home page or any other higher-level page, offering an efficient and user-friendly browsing experience. The concept of having breadcrumbs on websites was first introduced in 1995 by Jakob Nielsen as a part of his research on information architectures and navigation patterns.
Modern websites, especially those featuring in-depth hierarchical structures and complex navigation systems, benefit significantly from the implementation of breadcrumbs. According to research, 74% of surveyed users stated that breadcrumbs would be helpful for them in web navigation, while a study by IBM found that the use of breadcrumbs in a website led to a 12% decrease in navigation errors.
There are three main types of breadcrumbs used in the context of website development, which address different purposes:
- Location-based: These breadcrumbs reflect the hierarchical structure of a website and show the position of the current page within it. This type is particularly helpful for websites with a deep architecture or e-commerce platforms with a hierarchy of product categories and subcategories. An example path could be: Home > Electronics > Mobile Phones > Smartphones > Apple.
- Attribute-based: Attribute-based breadcrumbs provide narrowed-down navigation based on user-selected filters or attributes such as price range, color, size, etc. Commonly used in e-commerce platforms, users can navigate the site based on specific criteria, browsing items with similar attributes. An example path could be: Home > Mobile Phones > Apple > Price: $500 - $800 > Color: Blue.
- History-based: These breadcrumbs show the user's browsing history and order the visited pages in chronological order. They work similarly to the back button of a browser, and they offer a personalized and unique navigation experience for each user. An example path could be: Home > Products > Mobile Phones > Apple > iPhone 12 > Checkout.
When it comes to implementing breadcrumbs within a web application, developers can integrate them into their applications using various web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. AppMaster, a powerful no-code platform for creating backend, web, and mobile applications, allows users to seamlessly incorporate breadcrumbs into their projects. With its visual UI builder, non-technical users can easily design and configure breadcrumbs to organize the navigation within their applications.
Integrating breadcrumbs into your web applications developed with AppMaster not only results in a more efficient and user-friendly browsing experience; it also contributes to improved search engine optimization (SEO). Breadcrumbs provide search engines with more information about a website, capturing its structure and hierarchy, ultimately enabling better indexing and ranking.
To sum up, breadcrumbs are an integral part of contemporary website development and contribute significantly to creating well-structured, easily-navigable applications for a diverse array of users. By leveraging an extensive suite of tools such as AppMaster, developers and non-technical users alike can effortlessly integrate breadcrumbs into their projects and build highly-scalable and efficient web, mobile, and backend applications that boost user satisfaction and productivity.
