Multiple breadcrumbs

Question

Breadcrumbs allow users to keep track of locations within websites. They show the path used to achieve the resource. But if the resource could have different categories, has the sense to create multiple breadcrumbs or which is the correct one?

For example, if we need to organize writers, we can catalog them differently:

Writers // Origin // England // William Shakespeare
Writers // Periods // XVI century // William Shakespeare
Writers // Schools // Dramaturgy // William Shakespeare

Could it be correct to put all three breadcrumbs on a page?

Answer 1

It's not a good idea to break the convention of a single breadcrumb path. Because of how breadcrumbs are generally designed it's fair to assume that people expect them to make it possible to:

• see where they are
• see how they got there
• navigate back in the path

Multiple breadcrumb paths would probably make this very difficult if not impossible.

If you want to make your breadcrumb path more interactive with the possibility to navigate back over multiple branches you can make use of dropdown menu's.

The dropdowns contain links to the other pages on the same level. So it doesn't change the breadcrumb path (that wouldn't be correct), the links just immediately navigate to the different categories.

It is not a very usual pattern so it requires some user testing to know if and how to implement this.

Answer 2

Breadcrumbs are the wrong concept for your use case

Your problem, as you have found out: There are multiple valid routes from the currently selected item Shakespeare to its category Writer. Breadcrumbs, however, are at their best when there is only one route.

What to do?

Use tags on the items. Following your example, Shakespeare would be tagged with England, XVI century and Dramaturgy. Tags are usually displayed using chips.

The tag system has quite a few advantages:

• It improves discoverability, as a user can immediately read all categories your system provides without leaving the page or clicking anything

• It will also improve uncertain search, as the user can provide more than one tag to search

• It will require no more space than is needed to spell out the categories

All in all, the tag system will not only be better once you are at a writer's page, it will also streamline your way of finding one (or multiple) Writers. Users are also already deeply familiar with the concept by their usage of online shops.

To provide tags, users usually select a filter and apply that. Just visit any online shop (except maybe Amazon) and look at their concept. A dropdown menu with multiple-select will probably suffice, but in case you have more complex needs, ebay opens a modal dialog ("eBay: Advanced search dialog displays parameter values as radio buttons.") to let users supply filters.

And your breadcrumb? It would simply be:

Writers // William Shakespeare

for bookmarking and sharing filters, your URL could display:

example.org/writers?origin=England&Schools=Dramaturgy

Answer 3

A page has one breadcrumb. After all, it's located in only one location within the site. Showing three breadcrumbs at once seems a bit odd. It looks to me like you're a bit confused about the function of sitemaps. Sitemaps (and by extension, breadcrumbs) are an overview showing the structure of your website. You visualize where the pages are nested.

The way you display your breadcrumbs looks more like a tag; Shakespeare is from England, XVI century and he wrote dramaturgy - all at once. That's fine, and you can show that with related tags. But information about him in that role shouldn't be fragmented across three pages. Rather, users would expect a dedicated page with anything related to Shakespeare, and of course, be linked to other useful and related information elsewhere on your site.

Where am I? Breadcrumbs inform visitors of their location in relation to the entire site hierarchy.

Where can I go? Breadcrumbs improve the findability of site sections and pages. The structure of the site is more easily understood when it is laid out in a breadcrumb.

Should I go there? Breadcrumbs communicate content value and encourage browsing. (Source: https://usersnap.com/blog/breadcrumbs/)

You need to look at your sitemap (which is what breadcrumbs refer to) and see where within your site's structure you can place topics. You can use card sorting and other techniques to find logical clusters of information.

Of course, you can cross-reference to your William Shakespeare page from any of your three examples.

Answer 4

I share the same opinion as Wendy. How the user got to that page is not really relevant, so the breadcrumbs are unique.

A suggestion for a change in the site map that will allow all the categories in the same breadcrumb would be:

Writers > England > Dramaturgy > XVI century > William Shakespeare

And also, I would like to reference a similar question that can be found here.

Answer 5

Wikipedia already does this

See, for example, the 'Programming paradigms' box on the Wikipedia page for object-oriented programming.

As the other answers discuss, what you're describing isn't really a breadcrumb, it's a sitemap. You're showing the user the other categories they can view on your site. Depending on the size of your site, you could just include a whole section of your sitemap on each page. (If necessary, you could hide sub-pages below a certain nesting level, and only expand those nesting levels for the particular page the user is on).

The main benefit of a sitemap is that it contains all the information the user needs, or makes that information accessible as easy as possible. If the user wants to see what Polish writers there are, it only takes one click rather than two. Also, a sitemap is consistent from anywhere on the website, so the user can easily develop familiarity with it.

The sitemap is something the reader might reference while they are reading the William Shakespeare page, but they would only read it if they're interested in someone other than William Shakespeare. Thus, rather than just listing categories that William Shakespeare is in, it's helpful to list all the other categories someone might want to move to.

Answer 6

I read, and consequently investigated, the idea that every page on Wikipedia finds its roots in Philosophy.

Clicking the first link in the first descriptive paragraph will take you on a path that leads back to the Philosophy entry.

This is not breadcrumb, nor site map, but I think related to what the concept is that you are seeking to represent on your proposed William Shakespeare page.