This is a really useful data point, thanks for sharing it.

The hesitations you listed line up closely with what I’ve been seeing too — especially “already have a workflow” and “prefer simple”. It feels like most resistance isn’t about capability, but about introducing anything that feels like a new tool, even if it’s thin.

That’s actually the tension I’ve been trying to solve as well: keeping the original workflow completely intact, and making the public layer feel more like a passive view than something you have to “adopt” or manage.

I agree, and that’s exactly the failure mode I’ve seen too.

What seems to work better is when the “website” isn’t treated as a sales or marketing engine at all, but as a low-friction publishing surface for information that already exists and already has an audience.

That’s actually what I’ve been experimenting with www.sheet2notice.com: instead of building sites, letting people expose a public, read-only page directly from something they already maintain (like a spreadsheet). No funnels, no SEO promises — just a clean, auto-updating view over an existing workflow.

In that setup, the page supports whatever goal already exists (updates, coordination, trust), rather than pretending to create demand on its own.

That makes sense.

I’ve noticed a similar thing — business contexts already revolve around spreadsheets and dashboards, so the desire isn’t really “a website” as much as a stable, public view that stays in sync.

In those cases it feels less like publishing and more like exposing an existing source of truth in a readable way.

Curious whether you’ve seen this solved cleanly in Microsoft-centric setups, or if people mostly accept heavier tooling there.

I think this is something PowerBI can do. But that feels like a heavier layer of tooling. That weight might be inherent, as the data will always be different, as well as how it’s displayed.

It’s possible there are common use cases for small businesses that could be well served by a more standardized tool.

Personally I agree — I still prefer websites too.

What I find interesting is that a lot of information now lives outside traditional sites:

updates on social platforms

shared docs

spreadsheets

internal tools that get screenshotted or linked

In many of those cases, people aren’t really trying to “publish” in the classic sense — they just want a stable, public reference that doesn’t require joining a platform or logging in.

Search engines still matter, but it feels like a growing amount of content is accessed via direct links rather than discovery.

Curious whether you’ve seen good lightweight patterns for this that don’t turn into full websites.

In regard to the last question, I wish I do know but don't. I think the internet took a wrong turn in the 2010s. Yes, I am well aware of spam and cyberbullying but they've been used as an excuse to get rid of the better aspects of the internet.

Agreed. Many guardrails were necessary, but they also shifted publishing toward platforms and away from simple, owned spaces.

The middle ground seems harder to find now. Thanks for sharing this view.