i keep seeing people complain about how "every website looks the same" and that its a sign of the end of creativity etc etc but it was always as a little throwaway line that people are supposed to go "oh yeah i've noticed that a lot of websites look similar!" and are supposed to connect that with the death of web 1 and how social media is bad and so on, but there are a LOT of reasons why many websites look the same. they can be kind of broken down into two main categories, though: the users, the way users find/use the websites.

Back in the 90s slash really early 2000s websites were still kind of gimmicky. Unless you were in a field that required the use of certain sites/databases/references/communications etc the average person wasn't online nearly as much as they were today. People also didn't have smartphones (which I will come back to later), so they were using a whole computer setup with a very specific resolution (low), and overall being on the internet was a very specific experience. But I think it's also important to note that it was more younger people using them for casual use. Web 1 was more "creative" than web 2 is deemed now because to get ON web 1, you had to have a baseline of tech and web knowledge. There were a lot less people on the internet, so you were catering to the other relatively few people that were willing to dive into computers/The World Wide Web.

Nowadays, and this is something I'm sure everyone has heard a much older person complain about at some point or another, everyone is pretty much required to use the internet. It's how you apply to jobs, school, get benefits, get healthcare, find pretty much any up-to-date information. It's actually a problem for many people that aren't able to reliably access the internet for one reason or another (major ones being houselessness, living in extremely rural areas, or just not being able to use a smartphone). When the demographic for your site changes from "people who are computer-savvy" to "ANYONE" you have to give up a lot of funny quirks. You are now catering to the lowest common denominator, which is a 70 year old who's grandchild is painstakingly trying to walk them through using a site, and hoping that this will somehow translate into them being able to use other sites, and they won't have to be doing this every other day.

Organizations, whether they are businesses or non-profit/government, have websites because they are convenient for people to be able to either get information, or because they want the user to do something (make an appointment, get a quote, buy something) - they want whoever is using their website to be able to find it as quickly and easily as possible. There is sort of a trickle-down in UI, from major companies that get a lot of users, or have the internal resources to do a lot of user testing and figure out what's easy for people to use, to then other markets who use them as reference or their guides on how to make things easily understandable for a wide range of users (Google's Material Design is often referenced). If someone knows how to use X popular site, you don't have to teach them how to use yours again if you follow their lead.

Also: predicable design and using certain web standards is a necessity for accessibility. Someone using a screen reader needs to be able to understand the information presented on a site, and having things in a predictable order, and in an order that gives the most relevant information first. This is why we are still seeing certain sites that cater to specific clientele often get a bit more creative. An artist's site doesn't necessarily need to cater to any user, they're catering usually to other artists. Now, if it's an illustrator or designer using a site as their portfolio, then they'll probably want to go back and use something that will make it easy for a reviewer going through hundreds of sites to be able to quickly view their art, without getting frustrated. Frustration from new users (as well as slow-loading sites) is one of the biggest reasons why people will ditch a new site or service. How many people have complained about how confusing something like Mastodon is to get started?

From the other direction, there is the system that surrounds the website. We've all seen complaints about how so many websites have a lot of word-salad, and it's because of SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Basically, Google ranks websites to put in search results by A) how well the actual content of the site matches the literal search, and B) what it thinks that your search is actually looking for. There are a lot of things that go into SEO and there are entire markets built around it because of how valuable ranking high with Google is - it doesn't matter how excellent your website is if people never are able to see it. Legitimate websites also have to compete with those scam sites that just dump in as much nonsense as possible to get clicks, and thus make money off ad revenue. It's a constant pain in the ass battle and Google is constantly changing how its rankings work because of the scam sites. This effects the buttons, links, how headers/subheaders/body text is used. Google wants certain hierarchies of information, and rewards sites that have them.

But the biggest reason why so many websites look a certain way is because of responsiveness. Basically as of like 2019 over 50% of visitors to a given website were usually on a mobile device. This could be any kind of resolution, depending on the type of phone or tablet. Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it is to design a website to be responsive. You need to organize all the information in very specific ways and use flexboxes or way too many media queries to have text/images/etc set up so it transitions cleanly to different widths. The more complex the website is, the more difficult it is to do this. Simple transitions better and is less likely to break and glitch when presented in unexpected ways.

The proliferation of mobile is also the reason for a lot of other "design modernizations" that people get pissed about. Biggest example off the top of my head is the Google logo redesigns. I remember being in school everyone was complaining and joking about it. But there was a very good reason for it. Using simpler shapes for vector images makes the image load faster, and overall use less data. The new logo is only 305 bytes, while its old logo was 14,000 bytes. That is an enormous difference, especially when taking into consideration if someone on their phone has low bandwidth and/or needs to quickly search something. Again, this trickles down to other sites and other companies that want their sites to perform quickly on all platforms for all users with any level of internet connection.

Obviously there are a lot of issues with the way that the internet is set up but a lot of people miss the point as to not only why so many sites are designed the way they are, but also how we benefit every day from it.