A rule that I've always used with web design is to always assume that this is the first website your user has ever seen. Don't assume anything, make every feature as obvious and clear as humanly possible.

So today, that's been put to the test.

I had my girlfriend's mom help me beta test my new design. She's in her early 60s and uses Facebook on her phone regularly, Craigslist on occasion, and she says she looks at other sites but I don't know if she really means that.

So very first thing, she saw an Adsense banner at the top of the page (beneath the header, above the content), thought it was navigation, and clicked on it. That opened a new tab, and she was lost... no clue how to get back to my site.

Second, she had no clue how to get to the navigation. I'm using the hamburger icon next to my logo that's pretty standard, and when you click it a sidebar slides out from the left with navigation. But she's never seen an icon like that (or if she has, she's never used it), so had I not been there to tell her what to do she would have been lost.

Third, once she got to a classified listing, she couldn't figure out how to get back to the category listings. Clicking "back" on her phone's browser didn't occur to her, and neither did going back to the main navigation.

These were MAJOR problems, all revealed within the first minute.

So my questions for you guys are:

1. How do you make the mobile navigation even more obvious? I've duplicated it at the footer, and I have content with links spread throughout the homepage, but that didn't help... she was looking for navigation, and the hamburger icon didn't occur to her.

2. What do you guys think about breadcrumbs on mobile? I don't remember seeing many mobile sites using them and it's going to take up a bit of precious ATF real estate, but it would help them figure out how to get back to where they were.