[_Lemon_]

I'd contest that it would only matter if you're the same as everyone else if it's contrary to your goal(s). What is your goal? For most it would be to get users to purchase something (aka, make money).

There's the other upside that if your website isn't radically different from others, a lot of your users will already know how to use it. There could be a lot to gain with a lot of your visitors knowing how to extract information from it.

I guess the only real way to know is by testing!

[tomkarlo]

Yeah, I'd agree. I've seen far more UI design crime done in the name of "doing it a new way for the sake of it" than is caused by being similar to other implementations.