The shop metaphor

It's generally difficult to get points about web management across to people who are not web experts themselves - and that, unfortunately, likely includes all the people with any kind of power over the web in your institution. Whether you're dealing with complete novices ("Can you explain what you mean by 'home page'?") or with power users who have latched on to a particular concept as the solution to all things web ("But having more pages will help our search engine optimisation!"), you'll find it distressingly difficult put across what you *mean* when you talk about the web.

That's where metaphors come in useful. If you relate the web to something more familiar, and then get people to think about that instead, suddenly the expressions of confusion or of mulish determination are replaced by - joy! - understanding . Unless you're dealing with complete idiots (and I haven't yet).

The metaphor I find myself using most is that of a shop. People understand shopping. They know that shops are there to sell stuff, and that people go there to get what they want and then get out. All of which makes this a great metaphor for a website.

Sample uses:

• Case for collecting web stats beyond "how many hits did we get on our site": say we have a shop; measuring hits is like measuring how many people look at the shop window. There's some use to it, but what we really want to know is how many people came in, and how many bought something.
  
  
• Reducing use of explanatory text: if you ask the shopkeeper where something is, do you want him to tell you, or do you want him to spend five minutes telling you why the thing you want is so great?
  
  
• Calling things what they are: which makes you think less, an aisle called "tea and coffee", or one called "variety of hot beverages"?

I'm sure you can come up with your own exampes, and I am equally sure that my metaphor breaks down at some point. But I haven't found that point yet!

Any advances on good web metaphors to use?