Recently when I was developing a web site, I got a comment from one in the design team, who didn’t think we had followed their specifications close enough.
“Why is the first heading on the first page “Start Page” ? Why isn’t it “Welcome to XXXX!” as we said in the specification?”
Well, this is actually a really good question, and it got me thinking. As a user, if there isn’t a clear bread crumb, highlight or anything else that indicates where on the site I am, I will get confused.
A really good example of bad usability is this blog. It’s difficult to gasp who writes it, what it is about and how you navigate it, if you haven’t used a similar blog before.