Taken from Jakob Nielsen's website:
Structural Navigation
Do not link to all sections of the site from all pages. What is the
probability that a user will go from looking at hairdryers to looking
at grunge music? More to the point: what is the probability that
the user will need the link on the one day in human history
when he or she wants to make this transition. Why not just go back to the
home page (one click to a page that is already cached and thus displays in
half a second if coded correctly).
Instead, provide links to all levels of the hierarchy above the current
location. Breadcrumb trails serve two purposes:
- the context of the current page (how it is nested) allows users to interpret the
page better (you don't just know that you are looking at product 354, you
also know that it belongs to the widget product family)
- the links allow users to go directly to a higher level of the site
in case the current page is not what they wanted, but they do want
something similar
True, users will often ignore the structural links, but sometimes they will
notice them, especially when they are interested in understanding a page
better. Without structural links, pages become orphans that are not
contextualized. And since users often arrive at pages through search or
other means that bypass the higher-level navigation pages, it is necessary
to provide a path back to these higher levels. In particular, it is useful
to link to a page that provides an overview of the current subsite or region.
Just my 2 cents.
