Breadcrumb navigation is a navigation element on a page that helps users find their way around the hierarchy of the whole website. The origin of the name is rather amusing.
The name was taken from the well-known fairy tale of the gingerbread house, in which Hansel dropped pieces of bread along the way so that he could follow them back. As you move through a website, you gradually build a path behind you and thus create hyperlinks that you can then click to go back up a step.
The hyperlinks in breadcrumb navigation are special links to parent sections. Navigation is most useful on websites with a large structure and many sections. Thanks to it, the visitor can see exactly which section and category they are in and which category, for example, the article they are reading belongs to. For breadcrumb navigation to work properly, the structure of the website must be well designed from the very beginning.
Breadcrumb navigation is most often placed in the page header below the company logo. The links are usually separated by an arrow, a slash or a dash. The first link is usually the website's home page and the last is the current page the user is on. The last item should not be active, so that the page does not pointlessly link to itself.