There are some good books out there that describe the impact of usability on everything we do. Consider this, you’re at home on the couch and it’s late at night. You decide it’s time for bed so you reach over to your televisions remote to turn it off. When you reach for the off button where does your thumb go? Most likely, if it’s a usable remote, your thumb reaches up to the top left of the device.

Well, why did you do that? Without even thinking you already knew where to go because this has become a standard on all products throughout the world. Let’s say we change the standard and now the power button is located in the bottom right.

Does that make sense? Of course not! Why is that? Because developers thought about this a long time ago. It doesn’t make any sense at all to have to make people use to hands to turn the power on our off. Some people like holding the remote while they’re watching TV. With a power button in the bottom right position, it’s a guarantee that someone out there would be getting rather upset that they keep turning off their television on accident.

Look, we’ve standardized things for a reason. When you’re building a website, don’t reinvent the wheel. People are already attached to standards and expect various pieces of information, like a phone number, to be located somewhere near the top right of the website. Make smart decisions and the customers will keep coming back to your website.