One Day, All Web Sites Will Be Blogs

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing riffed Thursday on how many companies — particularly SMEs — continue to employ useless “welcome” pages as their Web home pages:

A bit of a soap box speech today, but I can’t take visiting another small business web site only to be greeted by a home page that says, “Welcome to our web site!” … Think of your home page as an ad for your web site … Blast them with the 3-4 top reasons they need to know all about you. And please, go beyond the basic description of your business and its services.

As I read John, I was reminded of B.L Ochman’s post of a few days earlier, in which she noted that blogs were beginning to replace “static Web sites” — and pointed to the site of Union Square Ventures as an example.

I realized:

1. How John was right;

2. How B.L. was right; and

3. How transitioning to blog-based Web sites will ultimately put an end to “welcome” pages and other common Web annoyances, particularly with SME sites.

Granted, the Union Square site isn’t the most exciting visually — but it’s comparable to many SMEs, and as blog software evolves, the design options will increase dramatically. I expect that within a couple of years, businesses of all sizes will be able to create highly attractive Web sites built on blog software.

Converting to a blog-based site can yield tremendous benefits — particularly for companies that consider it too costly or time-consuming to work with code-slingers to build their site. A blog-based site will enable SMEs (or the corporate communications departments of larger companies) to build and update their sites without the ongoing need for technical help.

Once that burden is lifted, we can finally address a problem even more irritating than “welcome” pages: the failure of many companies to update their Web sites regularly.

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