People spend twice as much time looking at the left side of your web page as they spend looking at the right. According to "the king of usability,"  Jakob Nielsen in an April 2010 study, web visitors spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. Nielsen recommends keeping navigation to the far left; placing the main content a tad further from the far left; and showcasing your most important content between one third and halfway across the page. That's where users focus their attention the most. Here's an area where it doesn't pay to be creative. We train people to pay attention to certain spots on the page because most sites place their key information there.  Break with the conventional layout and you risk breaking down your readership. For the details on Nielsen's study, go to www.useit.com/alertbox/horizontal-attention.html.