More wisdom from the master of all things 'usability' Mr. Jakob Nielsen. This one is a nugget about how web pages are typically viewed with the conclusion that the left side of a page gets more attention than the right.

Genius or just plain obvious?

Again though it begs the questions should we all just follow these conventions and have web pages that all look the same or perhaps just agree that for certain sites like news delivery this works and for others like a gimmicky FMCG brand with a load of interactivity it perhaps doesn't.