| It's not just a cargo-cult mentality. There's a decent amount of research that has found that putting things in non-standard locations impairs most users' ability to accomplish what they want on your website. The Nielsen Norman Group is a decent place to find some of this research. There's some decent information here about how conventional layouts tend to be more effective: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/horizontal-attention-leans-... and how placing logos in the center instead of on the left often prevents users from accomplishing their goals: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/centered-logos/ and the reason all of this matters is that the computer skills of a typical person using your website are probably far, far worse than you think they are: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ so if you deviate from the "standard" layout too much, you'll hurt your website's business value because people won't be able to use it effectively. I think there's still lots of room for creativity within a standard layout. But too much creativity might result in a site that looks better from an aesthetic standpoint but is less effective at actually delivering business value. |