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There are three suggestions here, All of which I have used heavily.
1) Create a Custom HTML Block with some text that you want displayed, such as your welcome message and graphics
2) Use the Marquee module to do similar, but slightly flasher and present more date.
3) Use the Excellent WF-Channel Module. Set a link in the HTML welcome to go to this, and then you can have all you static pages very easily linked in on here, plus it has excellent "link to us" and "Refer a Freind" functionality.
Just a few ideas. Hope they help!