The thing many web sites miss is good content. That's what makes people come back. And the sooner you get to the content, the better. AskJeeves is the search engine I like best because it has a bit of personality and the results work. I think that's because they have editors trying to figure out what people are going to ask about the Web before they ask it.
People seem to be genetically wired to look at motion first.
Only then do we look at text. It would be a mistake to imagine that that people read much of anything. They scan and browse text, particularly on the Web. A big headline will be read faster than a small one. Large text type is easier to read than small type.