In real life, people have less time and more choice....

If they can't find what they want and quickly, they'll go somewhere else.

We treat web communications like a sushi bar, not a burger bar

In the Burger bar:
You walk in and wait in line...
You get to the front of the queue, look up at the pictures on the menu
"That looks nice" you think, and place your order...
You wait again....it arrives...
You go and find somewhere to sit down, unwrap it and all too often it's not what you had hoped.

In the Sushi bar:
You arrive, you sit down
The dishes come right past you
What you see is what you get
Something takes your fancy, you pick up the plate
The wasabi, the soy sauce, the pickled ginger are all within easy reach
Even the drinks come to you.

We don't expect users to know where to look, and we don't expect them to make an effort to find things. We make it easy for them, and make their next steps easy - all within reach. We make it obvious where they are in the site, where they are in the process. In fact we make it so obvious they don't even need to think about it.