I moved the content of my site (this one) over to the WordPress CMS yesterday, and was immediately impressed with how great everything worked out of the box.  From the tongue in cheek install process (which on page 3, the final page, of the clean web installer, joked “Sorry if you were wanting more steps..”), to the really smooth administration console.

WordPress being so good got me thinking about how many other online applications are made so generic, and it made me think more about how this might hurt the wallets of IT contractors everywhere!

Already, setting up an online shop can be done with oscommerce – the code is free.  If the budding shop-keeper wants an even easier life, products like the BT Online Shop exist, that are a hosted catalogue, cart, and payment system – yours, and hosted for £25 a month.

Of course, plenty of opportunities exist to build modifications on existing back-office platforms.  From this point of view, the entrepreneurial consultant will enjoy deploying a free or cheap “shop”, and make plenty of money integrating it into a stock-room implementation in double quick time.  The best shops will also deploy their own front end application, so that their store stands out, just as today the best blogs seem to be unique in their presentation (e.g. the BBC).

But a design house who’s bread-and-butter income is derrived from deploying shops and small business sites, is going to find it increasingly hard to win work if they don’t diversify.