A homepage is really just the online presence of a real‑world entity. You can use a content management system or something incredibly simple—a small homepage example. The navigation doesn’t really matter much.
The bigger point I’m trying to make here is this: this is one way of building a webpage. When we talk about a web product, people almost always want a front door. That’s what a homepage traditionally is—a front door.
If we go back about 20 years, that made total sense. When someone went to a site, they went to the front door first and then navigated their way through. But none of you do that now. So why do we still build sites like that?
What do you actually do? You search. You search, find the specific page you care about, and go directly there. You don’t land on the homepage and then drill down through navigation menus.
And again, this comes back to the idea of an external entity. The website isn’t the product—it’s just an online presence.