How to build a website for a home bakery

Start from the problem, not the design

Read the bakery's Instagram captions before anything else. They tell you what the site must fix. "DM to order" means every sale is a conversation. "Deposit required to hold your date" means the baker chases bank transfers by hand. "Slots full for the 14th" means customers are asking about dates that are gone. "Please read the pinned post before ordering" means the same questions arrive every day. Each of those sentences is a feature, and the site is finished when none of them needs to be posted again.

What the site must do

1. Show the menu with prices. Photos from the baker's own Instagram, one line of description, the price or the starting price. Custom cakes get a "from" price and a note on what changes it.
2. Take the order in a form. Date needed, item, size or servings, flavour, dietary notes, message or personalisation, name, phone, and how the customer will collect. Every field the baker currently asks for in DMs goes on the form, and nothing else.
3. Take the deposit immediately. A fixed amount or a percentage, paid by card at the end of the form. This is the change that gives the most time back. No screenshots, no "did you send it", no unpaid slots blocking the calendar.
4. Show availability. A calendar with the dates that are open, the dates that are full, and the lead time. Customers self-select; the baker stops answering "are you free on Saturday".
5. State pickup rules once. Address or area, collection window, what happens if they are late, whether delivery exists and what it costs.
6. Carry the legal details. In the United States, most states require cottage-food labelling and some require the registration number or a statement that the kitchen is not inspected. In the United Kingdom, the council registration and food hygiene rating. In Australia and Canada, the local or provincial registration. A footer line and a labelling note on the order confirmation cover it.
7. Confirm automatically. An email or WhatsApp message with the order summary, the deposit received, the balance due and the pickup details. The baker writes nothing.

What to leave out

• An "About" page longer than three sentences. Put the story on the homepage, above the menu, in one paragraph.
• A blog. It will not be updated.
• A gallery separate from the menu. The menu is the gallery.
• Live chat. The whole point is to take the conversation out of the order.
• Anything that needs a login. Customers order twice a year; they will not remember a password.

Choosing where to build it

The platform matters far less than the domain. A site on a domain the baker owns is a website. A page on Linktree, Hotplate, a myshopify subdomain or a Square subdomain is not, however good it looks, because the baker cannot be found by name in search and does not control the address. The checklist on how to tell if a business has a website covers the edge cases. With that settled:

Structure for a one-page site

Top to bottom: the bakery name and one sentence on what it makes and where; the order button; the menu with photos and prices; the availability calendar; the order form with the deposit step; pickup and delivery rules; the legal footer with registration details and contact. That is the whole site. Every section is one scroll, the order button appears at the top and again after the menu, and the form is the last thing before the footer so that a customer who has read everything lands on it.

Copy that sells cakes

Use the baker's own words from their captions. Bakers write well about their product and badly about themselves, so keep the product descriptions and cut the "passionate about" paragraphs. Prices go next to items, never on a separate page. Lead times go on the calendar, not in a paragraph. Allergens go on every item. If the baker is registered, say so plainly: "Registered with Leeds City Council, food hygiene rating 5" earns more trust than any adjective.

If you are the designer: pricing and pitching the build

Price the site against the hours it removes, not against your hourly rate. A baker doing forty orders a month spends perhaps eight to twelve hours on DM ordering and deposit chasing; a site that removes most of that is worth several hundred a month to them and is a one-off cost from you. In practice, template builds land around 300 to 600, custom one-page order sites around 600 to 1,500, in the local currency, plus the domain and hosting they pay directly.

Pitch it with a demo built from their own photos. Open the message on their ordering process in their words, state one outcome, link the demo, give the price in one sentence, and ask one question. The method is in how to find web design clients. Finding bakeries that need this is what the bakeries without a website pool is for: every listing there sells on Instagram and owns no site.

Launch checklist

• Domain bought in the baker's name, not yours, and pointed at the site with HTTPS.
• A real test order placed with a real card, refunded afterwards.
• Confirmation email or message received and readable on a phone.
• Calendar blocked for the dates the baker already has.
• Instagram bio link changed from the Linktree to the new domain, and a pinned post announcing "order on the website".
• Google Business Profile created or updated with the website field.
• Registration and allergen text checked against the local rules.