Does it work to use a heading as a backlink/breadcrumb on landing pages?

Question

On landing pages where there are many ways to get there (email, multiple index pages), we want to funnel users back to a single index. We currently use a breadcrumb at the top to indicate the canonical parent–child relationship and take users to the source, but I think it would be more elegant to make the page heading for the page serve as a back link.

For example, a page containing a sale from a store might see users come from any of a number of sources: email about the sale, from an index of sales for the week, from the store page, the homepage, a sidebar. Regardless of how people arrived, we want to route them to the store page, so the layout might look like this:

« Store Name

Sale Title

Is this an elegant solution? Can you cite examples of this in the wild?

Answer 1

I'm assuming that you have some content (information, sale etc) on the page that the people are landing on. My suggestion is to always put a follow-up on all of your pages. That way you gain more control over the way people surf through your website.

• Offer information? Offer them a link to more information or to your catalogue.
• Have an offer on the page? Offer them to directly act upon it and put it in the shopping basket OR provide a link to the page where they can find the products that go with the offer.

Long story short, I would put the solution in the follow-up of your page. Of course, there's nothing wrong with breadcrumbs and a link behind the logo, but they might not be as obvious to your visitors. :)

Answer 2

I am still not too convinced thats a very efficient approach because looking at your proposed solution, I get the impression that the home page (main store page) was the previous page.This could cause some confusion my user behavior is like this

Read about the sale in the email --> come to sale page --> branch off to another item page by clicking a link--> decide to go back to the original page

In the case I decide to go back to the original page,my reaction would be either press the back button (which may or may not work depending on whether your site is SSL based) or look for an link back).The back to the store link doesnt really convey anything to me and it just gives me the impression that the store page was the last link visited though it might have not been the case

I would suggest using both these approaches in tandem

1) Make the logo a link back to the main store page (and also the logo in the footer too,if you have one there)

2) Use breadcrumbs which tell the user where you are and ensure these breadcrumbs are clickable

so Home > Item type > sale would be the current breadcrumb on your page and the user has two options to go to the home page.

Another reason I am opposed to having the back to home link on top of the secondary title (lets call the page title that ) is because I might accidently click it and end up on the home page which could lead to confusion and potential loss of a sale