how do people really use the web?

so recently I had a discussion about how people use the web and exactly what they like to see verses some cool exciting innovative designs.
My dilemma, looking at what is a good nice clean and what I consider very functional and useful v's what users really want.
At the end of the day, for people with no special needs, nor tech savvy, keep it basic and ensure it follows existing design conventions such as link to home from top left hand image/icon/logo, use tabs for different pages, keep it standards compliant so that it looks and works the same in any browser, ensure a balanced use of javascript, in case javascript is turned off, and ensure that the page can 'degrade' gracefully ie don't just design it so that people must have the latest and greatest updates to browsers or web applications. People don't do what you expect - this is the only constant you can rely on in the UI, UX design area.