What I Found Auditing 20 Bakery and Patisserie Websites

Most bakery websites nail the photography but forget the basics that actually bring people through the door.

I spent a week reviewing 20 Australian bakery and patisserie websites, from single-shopfront operations in Adelaide to multi-location chains across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. After building websites for more than 150 small businesses across every industry you can think of, I wanted to see how bakeries handle the specific challenge of selling something people need to taste, smell, and touch before they buy.

The article covers what I found. Some of it was predictable, some of it genuinely surprised me, and a few things would cost a bakery owner real money if they stay unfixed.

Good photos but nothing else above the fold

Bakery owners understand the power of a good product shot. 17 of the 20 sites I reviewed had strong, professional food photography.

A handful were genuinely beautiful. Flour and Stone in Sydney uses warm terracotta tones and tight close-ups of tarts and pastries that make you want to reach through the screen. Lune Croissanterie opens with a full-screen video of their kitchen in action.

The problem is that great photos on a poorly structured page don't convert anyone. Only four of the 20 sites had a clear call to action visible above the fold without scrolling. The rest relied on their navigation bar or expected visitors to figure out what to do next.

What should a bakery website show above the fold? At minimum:

• Business name and suburb so visitors know they've found the right place
• Today's hours or at least a link to hours that doesn't require scrolling
• Phone number or "Order Now" button for customers who already know what they want
• One strong product image that sets the tone for the brand

Flour and Stone gets three of these four right. Most of the other sites get one. The photos carry the page, but without a clear next step, visitors look at the pastries and leave.

Contact details buried on almost every bakery website

Only three of the 20 bakery websites had a phone number visible without scrolling. For any local business that's a problem, but for a bakery it's worse. People searching for a bakery are often on their phone, often nearby, and often in a hurry.

Multi-location bakeries were the worst offenders. Bourke Street Bakery lists more than 15 stores across Sydney, but finding today's hours at a specific location takes three separate clicks.

Little Sister Bakery in Melbourne shows seven locations with embedded maps, which is great. But the only call to action across the entire homepage is a contact form buried at the very bottom of the page.

Single-store bakeries didn't fare much better. Several had their phone number only in the footer, below the Instagram feed and newsletter signup.

For a bakery, most customers want two things: where are you, and are you open right now? If the answer takes more than one scroll, they'll try the bakery down the road. A well-built business website puts this information where people look first, not last.

Page speed problems across half the bakery websites

Page speed varied enormously across the 20 sites. The fastest loaded in under two seconds with clean markup and compressed images. The slowest stacked so many tracking scripts and custom fonts that the page took six seconds to become interactive on a mobile connection.

I found one bakery site loading four separate Google tracking tags plus Facebook and LinkedIn pixels. That's a lot of analytics overhead for a bakery that sells sourdough to the local neighbourhood.

Another loaded three custom font families with 14 weight variations. Most of those weights never appeared anywhere on the page.

The fastest-loading bakery websites I reviewed shared one trait: they kept things simple. Here's what was slowing the others down:

• Redundant tracking scripts running multiple analytics tags that collect the same data
• Unoptimised hero images often 3,000+ pixels wide when the page displays them at 1,200
• Custom font files loaded in weights (thin, light, regular, medium, semibold, bold) when only two weights appear on the page
• Third-party chat widgets and social embeds that load their own JavaScript bundles

I've fixed all four of these on client sites before. The tracking script cleanup alone usually cuts load time in half.

Ordering was either overbuilt or missing entirely

The split across the 20 sites was dramatic. Some bakeries had full product catalogues with variant selectors, size options, and payment processing. Others had absolutely no way to order online, not even a simple enquiry form.

Baked and Co in Sydney offers a full digital catalogue with product grids, quantity selectors, and Apple Pay at checkout. That makes sense for a wholesale bakery supplying cafes across the city.

Bourke Street Bakery uses two separate third-party platforms for catering and retail orders. It works, but the experience feels fragmented for customers switching between them.

At the other end, Little Sister Bakery has no ordering capability at all. For a bakery with seven locations and strong media coverage, that's a missed opportunity.

The right approach depends on the bakery's business model. But here's what every bakery website needs at minimum:

1. A phone number displayed prominently for call-ahead orders
2. A simple enquiry form for custom cake and catering requests
3. A downloadable or web-based menu with up-to-date prices
4. Click-and-collect functionality if the bakery does any volume in pre-orders

A neighbourhood bakery doesn't need a full product catalogue. But if a customer can't place an order from their phone at all, you're losing sales you'd otherwise have.

Small bakery websites copying chain-level navigation

Breadtop's navigation makes sense for a multi-state franchise: product categories with subcategories for cakes, breads, and seasonal items, plus state-based ordering menus and a store locator. Bakers Delight uses a similar structure with account logins and loyalty program integration.

When you have hundreds of products and dozens of locations, you need that complexity.

But I found three independent, single-location bakeries copying this same structure. One had a seven-item dropdown menu under "Products" with subcategories for bread, pastries, cakes, savoury items, drinks, and catering.

The bakery has one small shopfront and around 30 products. A website structure built for a business ten times its size.

A neighbourhood bakery needs four navigation items, five at most:

• Menu (or "Our Bakes")
• About
• Location and Hours
• Contact (or "Order")

More menu items means more decisions for the visitor. If someone can't find what they need quickly, they'll just Google a different bakery.

Colour choices that work against the food

Flour and Stone uses a terracotta accent colour with warm neutrals. The palette makes the page feel like walking past a bakery window on a Saturday morning.

Bourke Street Bakery uses cream backgrounds with earthy brown text. It's warm, inviting, and the product photography sits naturally against it.

Then there's Dulwich Bakery in Adelaide, which uses a bright blue (#2EA3F2) as its primary accent colour. Research on colour and food perception has found that blue reduces appetite cues compared to warm tones. The baked goods in Dulwich's product photos look fine, but every blue button and blue heading pulls the visitor's eye away from the food.

Lune Croissanterie takes a different approach: high-contrast black and white with minimal colour. Lune's brand is premium and architectural, and the absence of colour creates a gallery effect that elevates the product photography.

The pattern across all 20 sites was clear. Warm, earthy tones (cream, terracotta, olive, brown) consistently made the food look better. Cold or bright palettes made the pages feel clinical.

Colours that worked well across the bakery websites I reviewed:

• Cream and off-white backgrounds that let product photos breathe
• Terracotta and warm brown accents for buttons, headings, and links
• Olive and sage greens for bakeries leaning into a natural or organic brand
• Charcoal text on light backgrounds for readable body copy without stark black-on-white

If the bakery website's colour palette wouldn't look natural printed on a paper bag, it's probably wrong.

What the best bakery websites got right

The gap between the best and worst bakery websites I reviewed had nothing to do with how much they spent. The good ones just knew what they wanted visitors to do, and didn't make them guess.

Here's how the standout sites compared on the things that actually matter:

Bourke Street Bakery's approach to storytelling stood out. Their headline, "22 Years of Perfection", and the story of their sourdough starter named George give visitors a reason to care beyond the menu.

Lune Croissanterie strips everything back to one message: "An institution solely dedicated to the creation of croissants." You know exactly what Lune does within three seconds. Most bakery websites can't say that.

Every strong bakery website I reviewed did fewer things, but did them well. Lune doesn't try to sell merchandise, run a blog, and push loyalty signups from the homepage. Lune sells croissants, and the website reflects that.

Frequently Asked Questions

The single biggest thing I'd change across almost every bakery website I reviewed? Put the phone number and suburb in the header, visible on every page. That one fix would do more for walk-in traffic than any redesign.