It's one thing to grow a language, adding foreign words in common usage. It can also happen by modifying existing ones like Chris Borgan's recent use of shareability - perfectly logic and understandable. Funny by the way, Chris was challenged about the existence of the word, but he didn't inventshareability, I just saw a reference to it from a 1986 article and hundreds more recent.
Inventing a whole new language of web nomenclature and navigation is something we're occasionally asked to do by customers. Simply stated, here's why this is not a good idea. The way you visit web sites is a kind of language. Everyone expects to find information like contact, visit, menus, wine lists, technical product data, company background, opening hours, etc. They expect this to be in a language they know, the one they've seen on a million other sites.
The temptation to be too creative is strong, and I have erred more than once in that direction. One day I thought it would be cool, instead of calling the search "Search" we'd call it "Find". It works on a level where you read it in a text like this, but not on the level of the scan you do when you first reach a site. Most ergonics folks will tell you the first 20 seconds are when the critical decision to invest in actually reading a web site takes place.
A commercial web site can, in effect, be a visual answering machine. Realizing what the visitor is most anxious to find there is your number one priority. Here's a funny thing that happened to me in California, when I wanted to reserve a table in a restaurant. I went to the web site, which was one page. It had all of the information I wanted right then: address, directions to get there, phone number, open hours, and descriptive stuff I skipped, since I already knew all about it and wanted to book a table there. Now here's where it gets funny: I called the "Reservations" number, which was shared by the same owner's other restaurant. Here's what I heard:
Thank you for calling *****. We are open from **** to *** Monday thru Friday and from *** to *** Saturday. Sunday hours are *** to ***.
We are located at ********, across the street from **** and just around the corner from ****. We are proud to announce the opening of our new restaurant ***** this summer. (Long description follows....)
"For Restaurant A, press one. For restaurant B, press 2"
How long would it take you to figure out that the last line of this message should have been the first?