Bread Crumbs at Page Bottom: An experiment

Why I put the breadcrumbs on the bottom of the pages on b-cage.net

This entry was first published on October 08, 2004, 02:35 AM, CET and categorized as Misc, Web.

So far, 1 comments have been added to this entry. You can add your thoughts to the discussion below.

This is a short summary why I moved the breadcrumbs from the top to the bottom of the pages on the sites main content.

The recent change of the global navigation scheme - from menu style to the current list in the header - made the header feel overloaded with the breadcrumbs in the top bar. Additionally, pages with much content (see the uQueue page for an example) the navigation opportunities required more user actions than necessary when he read/skimmed the whole page. So, I had to decide whether I should add a few go to top links to the content or provide some kind of mirror of the top navigation at the bottom.

Neither seemed nice for shorter pages.

And as I removed the breadcrumbs from the header anyway, I decided to test if they work at the bottom of the page. This way, the user has some navigation conveniences at the end of long content pages and the content of smaller pages is not lost in a navigational overload (see the About page and imagine the main navigation mirrored at the bottom).

As this is an experiment, it may change pretty soon again - a user might not expect breadcrumbs at the bottom hence it could be not really useful, especially for the (overly) secure minded web user who disabled JavaScript - but I like to hear your thoughts on this anyway :)

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  1. Scoutn, 5 days later

    From a usability standpoint, I don't see the issue. So what if the breadcrumbs are at the bottom of the page? You still present a navigation system at te top of the page, where a user can backtrack to where they were anyway. The top links act as breadcrumbs in a sense; a user is still able to navigate your site.

    The breadcrumbs are simply a navigation system in a different format. Placing them at the top is almost redundant.