"users expect an interactive experience with a website" - I think this is a generalization that is getting a lot of web developers into needlessly complex toolchains and frameworks.

When I'm in a browser, 99% of the time I expect the page to have what I'm looking for. I rarely care if its interactive. In fact, the more interactive it is, the less enjoyable the experience is. This holds even firmer when I'm on a desktop.

I tend to agree. It’s frustrating whenever whatever nugget of information I’m seeking is buried under multiple clicks (navigation, collapsible sections, modals, popovers, etc) and even worse when one or more of those clicks results in a loading spinner that takes longer to play its fade in transition than it would’ve taken to load an entire static page.

No, regular users definitely prefer web pages over interactive websites.

With webpages, any delays make intuitive sense and are accepted by the user. With an interactive web app, the web app gets blamed for any delays or latency because there is no full-page refresh.