There's a song from Sesame Street that I used to sing when I was a kid. It goes something like this:
One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others By the time I finish this song?
This song probably wasn't written as a conspiracy to shape the younger generation into an army of information architects, but it serves that purpose. It also gives consumers the critical thinking skills to know when the placement of something on a website is just wrong. Consumers are smart like that. They may not have been to your website before, but they already have set opinions on where things should be, and if something isn't where they think it should be, they won't be happy – and they might very well leave your site and cost you sales revenue. And website managers know that. Their analytics prove that.