As previously noted here, a web visitor's eyes will scan and dart across a web page. Your site visitors are almost guaranteed not to read a page in the way you have intended or according to how you have laid it out.
A fascinating write-up on this topic is available on the Poynter Institute's Eyetrack III site. Especially interesting are charts based on aggregated eyetracking that show how people tend to scan and read sites. In this particular study, they examined eye movements of users who were visiting news sites such as CNN.com, USAToday.com, and SFgate.com. Twenty-five sites were covered in all. Interesting stuff.
