“Make yourself at home.” It’s what we tell our guests when we want them to feel comfortable in our space. We say it as a courtesy. But if we really mean it, we’ll add information. We’ll tell our guests that there’s a pool table in the basement, snacks and refreshments out on the island in the kitchen… To immediately feel at home in new environments, most of us need to find our bearings first, to be shown around the place.

The same holds true for web-based applications, where invitations to make ourselves at home are pretty lackluster across the board. To be fair, a lot of energy is devoted to creating intuitive user experiences, but this isn’t the same as being shown around.

If you truly want your guests to feel at home in your app, you mig...