Case study · Brand, web, commerce & operations
Turning a cottage baker into a neighborhood destination.
Jenn’s business was changing. Her website needed to stop leading with custom cakes and start feeling like the warm, modern Abilene bakery she was becoming.
The shift
More than a redesign.
The assignment began as a menu update. It became a repositioning of the entire customer experience.
Jenn was moving beyond cakes as the main attraction to include breakfast pastries and hand-poured craft coffee. The previous site behaved primarily like an online cake-order catalog. The new experience gives local customers a clearer way to explore the menu, understand advance-order requirements and arrange pickup.
The strategic problem
The new site had to preserve custom cakes and cookies without letting them dominate. It also needed to distinguish everyday menu items from custom orders that require additional planning and approval, while making pickup instructions clear.
The design direction
I built a softer, more editorial visual system around Jenn’s existing personality: warm cream, bakery pink, deep berry and expressive serif typography. The result feels feminine and local without copying the old site or falling into a generic “cute bakery” template.
The experience
The homepage introduces Jenn’s as an Abilene neighborhood bakery and coffee business, places breakfast pastries and order-ahead behavior first, explains pickup in plain language and brings local trust back through customer recommendations.
What changed
A connected customer and staff experience.
The project reached beyond the marketing pages into ordering, operations and day-to-day usability.
Local-first positioning
Address, hours, story, products and service area are structured around how Abilene customers actually search and decide.
Order-ahead commerce
WooCommerce flows distinguish ready-today café items from advance orders, with pickup timing and payment rules made clearer.
Staff order desk
A phone-friendly front-end order view helps Jenn review orders, payment status, contents, customer details and approval needs without living in the WordPress dashboard.
Built into the details
Fast, findable and easier to use.
Good design had to hold up on real phones, real browsers and real bakery mornings.
Accessibility and responsive behavior
Touch targets, color contrast, headings, focus states and responsive spacing were treated as part of the visual design. The layouts were refined for small iPhones, tablets, laptops and large desktop screens—not only a handful of builder preview widths.
Search and AI discovery
The site establishes a clear business entity, consistent Abilene location signals, descriptive product language, crawlable page structure and local-business information that search engines and answer engines can interpret.
Maintainability
Jenn stays on the WordPress and WooCommerce setup she already owns, while the interface and operating tools are tailored around the way her bakery actually works.
Need this kind of transformation?
Your website can change when your business does.
If the site you have no longer matches the business you are building, let’s turn that gap into an advantage.