There appears to be currently ongoing some sort of shift in web development.
At the top end of the scale , people are creating more sophisticated "app like" websites that use sophisticated platforms like AWS and "serious" programming like Scala/Java/Ruby/Python/jQuery etc. Because once you have decided to invest serious money in your web development you want to use the best tech you can and build a very "bespoke" online experience.
However at the lower end, sites that would have 5 years ago been build using static HTML with a smattering of PHP and be run on low end shared hosting are being devoured by various platforms. For example rather than hire a webdesigner you can have a facebook fan page or wordpress blog for free (possibly paying someone to customise the CSS in a template for you). As another example in my area there are various services aimed at the takeaway business that provide a turnkey website with an online menu, opening hours, maps etc.
To be honest, working in the low end of the web dev market has always been a nightmare as this is where you will get shaky clients who can't articulate what they want and hardly want to pay anything for it.
If I was going to go back into website development for a business I would be far more interested in finding common requirements for a particular market segment and building something turnkey to sell to 1000+ customers at $20-100 per month where they can upload their own logo and change a bit of the CSS.
To an extent , yes.
Although basecamp is something that is intended more as an internal tool that just happens to work over HTTP and is not directed at any specific market niche (other than perhaps general SMB).
Let's think about real estate as an example.
I imagine that pretty much every real estate agent will want the following features on their website:
A list of properties (that can be sorted by Price etc)
Search By Postcode/Zipcode.
Then a page for each property with:
Pictures from inside/outside the property.
Asking Price.
Number of bedrooms/bathrooms.
Some blurb about the property.
A form to book a viewing (possibly integrated with calendering at the backend).
Of course they will also want the generic "contact us" pages and pages about how great they are.
You could develop all of this bespoke every time for each estate agent, but then the amount of time you invest and how good you can make it are capped by the amount of money they want to spend on the project. You also have to worry about hoating arrangements for each client.
Alternatively you could just build the best real estate website you can make, host it on your own infrastructure and charge a monthly fee to rent an "instance" of it. Because the website is already built activation can be instant.
As an added benefit (if you get enough users) you now have a huge database of properties which you could potentially use to launch your own property search/comparison website.
You will have customers who will require more custom functionality and will eventually outgrow your "one size fits all" system regardless of how customisable you make it. At this point however they are probably willing to pay a significant amount of money to have a bespoke website developed. Another option at this point would be to license them the sourcecode for your system so that they can take it elsewhere for modification.
At the top end of the scale , people are creating more sophisticated "app like" websites that use sophisticated platforms like AWS and "serious" programming like Scala/Java/Ruby/Python/jQuery etc. Because once you have decided to invest serious money in your web development you want to use the best tech you can and build a very "bespoke" online experience.
However at the lower end, sites that would have 5 years ago been build using static HTML with a smattering of PHP and be run on low end shared hosting are being devoured by various platforms. For example rather than hire a webdesigner you can have a facebook fan page or wordpress blog for free (possibly paying someone to customise the CSS in a template for you). As another example in my area there are various services aimed at the takeaway business that provide a turnkey website with an online menu, opening hours, maps etc.
To be honest, working in the low end of the web dev market has always been a nightmare as this is where you will get shaky clients who can't articulate what they want and hardly want to pay anything for it.
If I was going to go back into website development for a business I would be far more interested in finding common requirements for a particular market segment and building something turnkey to sell to 1000+ customers at $20-100 per month where they can upload their own logo and change a bit of the CSS.