Sweet Crumb Bakery had been selling at local markets for three years. They had a loyal following on Instagram, but they wanted to reach customers beyond their local area. They came to us for an eCommerce website.
The challenge: Sarah, the owner, had no technical experience and a limited budget. She needed a site that was easy to manage herself, looked as good as her cakes, and could handle online orders with delivery.
The planning process
Before we wrote a line of code, we spent an hour on a discovery call with Sarah. The key questions we needed to answer:
- What products would she sell? (celebration cakes, brownies, cookie boxes, seasonal specials)
- How would delivery work? (Royal Mail for brownies and cookies; courier for celebration cakes)
- How far in advance did customers need to order? (3 days minimum for brownies; 2 weeks for custom cakes)
- What price range? (£8 for cookie boxes up to £180 for tiered wedding cakes)
- What was the primary goal? (generating nationwide orders, not replacing the local market presence)
This planning saved weeks of back-and-forth later. We knew exactly what to build before we started.
What we built:
- A WooCommerce store with a clean, appetising design using her brand colours
- Product categories (celebration cakes, brownies, cookie boxes, seasonal specials)
- Online ordering with delivery date selection — customers choose when they need their order
- Stripe payment integration with 3D Secure for UK compliance
- An order management system Sarah could use on her phone — she gets a notification for every order, can mark it as in progress, and update the customer automatically
- Instagram feed integration to showcase her latest creations directly on the homepage
The photography approach
Sarah provided all the product photos herself — taken on her phone with natural light by a window on a white tablecloth. They looked fantastic. This is something we tell every food business: don't wait for a professional shoot. Good natural light, a clean background, and a decent modern smartphone is all you need.
We optimised all the images before uploading — compressed to WebP format, properly sized, with descriptive alt text for SEO. A WooCommerce store lives or dies on its product photography, and hers was excellent.
The SEO setup
We made sure the store was built for search from day one:
- Product pages with unique titles and descriptions targeting specific searches ("order brownies online UK", "custom celebration cake delivery")
- A clear site structure that Google could crawl easily
- Schema markup on product pages so Google understood the price, availability, and reviews
- A fast-loading site (under 2 seconds) because slow eCommerce sites lose sales at checkout
Results after 6 months:
- £4,200/month in online orders (up from £0)
- Nationwide delivery — orders from Scotland to Cornwall
- 40% of orders are repeat customers
- Less time at markets — Sarah now does 2 markets instead of 4, earning more with less effort
The site paid for itself in the first month of trading. Sarah had been nervous about the technology, but the WooCommerce dashboard was simple enough that she was managing it confidently within two days.
What other food businesses can learn from this
- Start simple. Sarah didn't try to sell everything from day one. She launched with six product lines and added more once she knew what was popular online.
- Delivery logistics first. Know exactly how you'll ship things before you go live. A customer who orders a celebration cake and gets it crushed in transit is a nightmare.
- Phone photography is good enough. Don't let the lack of a professional photographer hold you back.
- The Instagram-to-website bridge matters. Sarah's Instagram had 4,000 followers before we launched. We made sure every post linked to the shop. That existing audience became immediate customers.
"I was terrified of having a website. Simon made it so simple. Now I can't imagine running my business without it." — Sarah, Sweet Crumb Bakery
If you're a food business or maker thinking about eCommerce, get in touch — we'll have you selling online within three weeks.