Breadcrumb Navigation: An Exploratory Study of Usage

Just as Hansel and Gretel created a breadcrumb trail to find their path back home, today's internet user often finds a need to get back to a website's previously visited locations; hence, the cyber "breadcrumb trail" was created. This textual representation of where and how information is located within the website allows the user to link to major categories of information along a continuum of sequential order. For example, the breadcrumb path for a leather chair on the Office Max website would be: Home > Furniture > Chairs > Leather Chairs. The location of the navigational path is often prominently placed in the upper left quarter of the website page.