How to determine breadcrumbs for products with multiple categories?

Question

I have designed an e-commerce system whereby I have products which can belong to multiple categories. This works well for searching and browsing and allows users to find products more easily.

However, I have also implemented breadcrumbs on the product page, and I don't know how to determine which category the product should be shown as being in, seeing as it could be any of the categories that the product is in. Ideally I would prefer not to just select a category randomly.

Does anyone have any ideas? I would be grateful for only help!

Thanks, Nico

Answer 1

How about having globally weighted categories based on what you want to promote the most at this time, or "local" weights on the product's categories based on what's more applicable to it. In either case if there's a conflict their weights can resolve it.

I'd go for the 2nd one. There will always be a way to choose a category that's more appropriate for a product.

Answer 2

Because your categories are hierachical so I'd suggest that if a specific product belongs to several categories then its breadcrumb should contains root category first then sub-categories, the more user narrow down the navigation the more sub-catetories are appended into the breadcrumb.

Answer 3

You should make several breadcrumb lines (paths). Each path will represent one of the categories the product is in. You should show as many paths as the number of product's categories. This will give the customer a good choice.