It may be shocking to some, but even in today’s high-tech Internet age, there’s a sizable chunk of consumers who can only be described as “Web-phobic.” Instead of hopping online to quickly and efficiently locate a product, they’d rather drift from store to store in hopes of stumbling upon it in person. When I asked one such shopper their rationale for avoiding online shopping, she admitted she was afraid she’d “get lost.” Ironic, given that she’d just spent hours driving in circles looking for an obscure piece of china she could have found in minutes by searching Google.

There are a variety of tools you can implement on your eCommerce site to help prevent the feeling of disorientation my friend described. Enter the breadcrumb. The online equivalent of the “You Are Here” designation on a shopping mall map, breadcrumbs provide a subtle identification factor to show shoppers where they are currently and where they’ve been. Although not nearly as important or widely used as the global navigation or the search box, breadcrumbs have nonetheless become an industry standard in ensuring the comfort level of online shoppers.