What is Breadcrumb Navigation and how to perform the testing?

While using websites with numerous web pages, you might feel confused like which page you are currently in or from which page you reached the current page. For tracking this navigation, websites often use breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trail. Breadcrumbs are usually seen at the top of site pages. It is nothing but listing of website links separated by a greater-than sign (>). Here what user should do is just click the links and navigate to corresponding pages. Each link on breadcrumbs are termed as Levels. The main advantage of these links is helping users navigate to higher level pages of the site. Following are some of the test cases that can be referred while testing breadcrumbs in a site.

Test cases:

1. Ensure that the links are separator using > symbol without overlapping one among the other.
2. Ensure that the breadcrumbs are displayed at the top most part of the page, so that user can easily identify.
3. Ensure that on clicking the links redirects the users to corresponding page.
4. Ensure that the current location is highlighted on the breadcrumb.
5. Ensure that tool tip/corresponding page URL is displayed on mouse hovering the links.
6. Ensure that there is proper spacing in between the navigation links in breadcrumbs.
7. Ensure the browser compatibility of this feature (breadcrumbs).

Implementing breadcrumbs on websites increases usability. Therefore breadcrumbs are recommended for larger websites mainly ecommerce websites. Hope this article helps! Feel free to add your suggestions.