I still feel you’re missing the core reason why we’re at this current “blah” state of websites.

As a developer turned marketer I’ve had to learn new tricks to grow my business. I’ve learned that creating a beautiful widget (website) only appeals to the customer and not their customers and can have little effect on the bottom line. Websites now are all about conversion and traffic (not always in that order). In order to increase traffic you have to be programatic about your data and sometimes that means your creative freedom becomes a second class citizen. In order to convert you have to be smart about your delivery and placement. You have to create content that is exact and specific, this means letting go over your urge to be creative.

The core issue that drives boring and blah websites are the way we rank or value and reward the websites. We’re forced to be pragmatic about design and create websites that are functional, quick and easy to produce content to feed the google engine. Google could care less and more often0 than not penalizes you for quality design in favor for data rich content that is consistently placed and well organized and engineered. This is what google wants it and demands if you want traffic.

Of course you can create amazing design and quality content that converts and increases traffic but it’s always hard to serve two masters. (client and google) This usually is a direct expense to the client which in most cases my clients are not large big budget minded clients that want to invest in this type of solution.