The Breadcrumbs Box is a premium add-on for Focus (and Thesis) that enables you to deliver the ultimate navigation experience on your website.
And because it’s enhanced with Breadcrumb markup schema, this Box will delight search engines as much as it delights your visitors.
(See the breadcrumbs at the top of this page and elsewhere on the DIYthemes website? That’s the Breadcrumbs Box in action!)
Read on to see how the Breadcrumbs Box will bring clarity to your navigation structure and delight your visitors.
Universal website navigation is broken!
We all take website navigation for granted.
And why not? Navigation is simple—slap about 8 links to key pages in a universal nav menu1, and you’re good, right?
WRONG.
The rise of mobile devices and the emergence of new studies have made it clear: The prevailing website navigation model is broken.
This model is broken because it fails to account for basic user psychology, the nature of attention, and the way people use the internet in the age of social media.
Problem 1: User Psychology
From psychology studies, we know people struggle to make a choice when presented with too many different options. And how many options is too many?
Being presented with more choices, even good ones, can hinder effective action. In one study, doctors couldn’t make a decision when a second promising drug showed up.
~ Fast Company, November 2007
Clearly, you need to constrain the options you present to visitors. Does a universal nav menu with a bunch of links achieve this, or does it simply heap more cognitive load upon your visitors?
Problem 2: Attention is fragile!
When a visitor arrives on your website, you are responsible for managing their attention.
But attention is fragile! Even little things you do—or don’t do—can have significant effects on this attention.
This is why providing visitors with many links and options to navigate elsewhere on your site can actually undermine the goal of any particular page.
Every page should have a goal (opt-in, sale, lead, or content consumption), and if the visitor doesn’t meet that goal, the page is a failure.
Adding lots of links to your pages and compromising visitor attention is only going to increase the likelihood of failure.
Problem 3: People don’t browse websites anymore!
Thanks to the rise of social media, people don’t browse websites anymore.
Instead, they click through from social media feeds because they are looking for specific information. If you don’t give ’em what they want, they’ll leave.
That universal navigation menu? It’s for browsing, which nobody does anymore. It compromises your visitors’ attention—the most valuable thing on the internet. And it creates cognitive overload by presenting people with too many options.
Bottom line? It’s time to re-think the way we present navigation in the age of social media.
How does the Breadcrumbs Box improve website navigation?
The Breadcrumbs Box improves your website navigation by creating clear pathways for visitors.
Pathways are simple and intuitive—and that’s what makes them so effective!
When you start thinking about your navigation in terms of pathways rather than a menu, you’ll see opportunities to move visitors through your site with purpose and intent.
By using this approach, you’ll create more engagement and a greater connection with visitors.
And this makes everything you might want to do—sales, opt-ins, leads, or simply having people consume your content—more effective.
What is the Breadcrumbs Box Mindset?
To really benefit from the Breadcrumbs Box, you need to adopt a fresh mindset when it comes to navigation.
- Stop thinking in terms of “I want to make sure visitors see all this good stuff I have to offer.”
- Start asking yourself if you are managing visitors’ attention properly on every page of your site.
Are you aligning your goals with theirs? They want to get right to the point—after all, they came to your site for a very specific reason.
Are you delivering on what they want, or are you asking them to consider other irrelevant pieces of information?
This is so crucial that I’ve prepared a video to discuss how a proper breadcrumb implementation can help you focus visitors’ attention:
This video is served with the YouTube Box from DIYthemes.
I want the Breadcrumbs Box! What’s the next step?
First, ya gotta purchase the Breadcrumbs Box ↓
Attention: You must be an existing DIYthemes customer with a valid Thesis license in order to purchase this product!
Already a customer?
Log in and return to this page. If you have a valid Thesis license, this box will be replaced by a purchase link.
Not yet a customer?
You’ll need to purchase Focus before you can get this product.
Next, check out the Breadcrumbs Box documentation for critical info on setup, implementation, and customization.
Watch this Bonus Video!
Do you know how website navigation really works?
Take a mind-blowing deep dive into website navigation and see how it affects your visitors ↓
Warning! You will never be able to un-see the truths I reveal in this video!