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What test protocol would you suggest for discovering whether users find one of the two options as more efficient for navigation:

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Also (1): considering option 2, different visual representation variations could be tested, too (that is, breadcrumbs need not be necessarily tree-structured, they could be just left aligned):

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Also (2):

Sometimes there are several pathways to a given page in a web site; therefore I'd like to test which layout may be suitable for accommodating numerous breadcrumbs, as well.

Related questions: Breadcrumbs - vertical or horizontal?

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Not sure if you’re planning to implement breadcrumbs on mobile/app or desktop, or what that whole experience is like, but the common design for most breadcrumbs is in horizontal format with a character or symbol that separates distinct parts of data, like you have with the ‘/’.

Can you share more on the experience? Is the goal of the breadcrumb to go “back” or to explore multiple levels (and how many max levels)?

In terms of design, I would fall back on some UX principles, specifically Jakob’s Law, where user’s tend to spend most of their time on other sites, and through those learned experiences, they prefer every site (yours included) to work the same way as all the other sites they’ve ever explored.

Option 2’s visual representation variation:

  • where left align, and not visually nested, might come across as single page text links
  • where made into of buttons, might be visual overload to a user if there are more than three step progressions (and equally taking up too much space before beneficial content). It looks like those buttons are call to action buttons rather than links, and then “London” looks like the odd one out.

In terms of testing, the best way is to A/B test two pages with the different breadcrumb styles with your users. You can use tools like Optimizely to run your tests, and then you would gather and analyze the metrics like CTR (click-through rates), which breadcrumbs styles are they clicking on and going deeper into the site, etc.

Another method for usability testing is guiding a user to complete a specific task: how long can would it take a user to progress back to ‘construction services’ from landing on the ‘London’ page without having to press the back button on the browser (which can sometimes be intuitive for a user). Observe how they react: are they having navigation issues; which option are they able to find their way around more quickly, etc.

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  • @ CMD "Is the goal of the breadcrumb to go “back” or to explore multiple levels (and how many max levels)?" - both, of course. Breadcrumbs are meant to serve both purposes by design. (Users tend to prefer the back button when going back, though, in my observations.) How many max levels - all the levels back to the main page. Commented Jan 29 at 10:30
  • @ CMD Jakob’s Law is bs, IMHO. How would you find out what exactly the user learned as expectation from all the other sites they’ve ever explored? For instance, annoying pop-ups are abundant in "all the other sites", does that mean I should put three or more, as well? And how did Jakob prove that all the users are visiting the same "all other sites", so that they are getting the same experience and same learnt habits? How did Jakob prove that all the users share the same cognitive type so that we can generalize? That guy tried to be original, without much effort put in... Commented Jan 29 at 10:37
  • @ CMD: "guiding a user to complete a specific task" - this is actually what I am asking, a sample testing task, in details. :) Commented Jan 29 at 10:44
  • I think everyone can agree that pop ups are the worst haha—but, there's nuances with every type of design principle or ux laws for sure. Commented Jan 29 at 15:40
  • Well, Jacob’s Law is not much of a law at all. It only advocates that you have to be careful when introducing new patterns as people tend to not like learning new patterns. Using patterns widely used over the web increases the chance people recognize it and know how to move forward. Jacobs Law doesn’t say anything about researching other websites users go to or using existing patterns just for the sake of familiarity. Commented Mar 11 at 12:43
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This will depend on the kind of details you would like to have at the end. If you simply need a qualitative feedback to get more clarity on the direction of the design, mockups and testing with a focus group should do it. Because of the minimal constraints in this approach, it should be used acknowledging the risk that either direction will not hamper the core features of the product as well as the losses, if things do go wrong at the end, will be manageable, perhaps with a bit of rework. This will also depend on how well were the primary users studied as well as how reliable is the focus group.

If you are looking for a definitive data driven approach, A/B testing should be a good way to do it. It can be run with interactive mockups or full-blown coded alpha versions.

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