A new bakery website in 7 days: what actually happens when you stop putting it off

Seven days from kickoff to live. About one hour of your time, total. A price that is published before you talk to anyone. That is the whole shape of a bakery website build done properly, and the part that needs you is shorter than a single shift behind the counter.

Most owners picture something else: months of back and forth, a designer asking you to write your own copy, a bill that starts at one number and creeps to another, homework nobody has time for between a wedding order and a Saturday rush. That picture belongs to a different kind of agency, and it is the real reason nothing changes. So another year goes by and the site still isn’t pulling in customers, still fails on a phone, still looks tired next to the shop down the street with worse cakes and a better homepage. Knowing has never been the hard part.

Here is what happens on each of the seven days, hour by hour, including the only part that is yours.

Day 0: the hour you actually spend

You hand over what’s already sitting on your phone and in your head:

• Your logo, if you have one (not required)
• The lineup you want to sell more of: wedding cakes, custom orders, the daily case, cookies by the dozen
• Photos of real cakes you’ve already made, not staged product shots
• Your best reviews, or a link to where they live
• The number and the pickup-ordering setup you want live

Send it over as a text thread, a shared folder, a pile of screenshots pulled from your camera roll. We sort through it. Nobody hands you a blank document and asks you to write your own bio or “brand voice.” Selling a $650 wedding cake in words that make someone stop scrolling is our job.

Days 1 through 5: the build you never have to watch

Days 1 and 2 are the skeleton and the words. Every page gets built around one question: what does someone need to see before they book a $650 cake sight unseen from a stranger? A page for wedding work, a page for the daily case, proof stacked on every screen, a tap-to-order button that never hides. It’s the same conversion thinking this series covered earlier, fitted to your case and your customers specifically. Then it gets written in the language a bride or a Tuesday-morning regular actually uses, not “family-owned since 1998” filler.

Days 3 through 5 are the build itself, mobile-first, with a bride comparing five bakeries from her phone in a parking lot as the design brief. No plugins bolted onto an old WordPress install groaning under updates, no database to lock up mid-order. Here is why that matters. Google’s 2016 research found 53% of mobile visitors abandon pages slower than 3 seconds, and Portent’s 2022 analysis found 1-second pages converting about 3 times better than 5-second ones. A slow gallery of your best cake isn’t charming. It’s a closed tab.

You do none of this. Run your kitchen.

Days 6 and 7: you look, then it goes live

On day 6 you get a live preview link. Open it on your own phone, hand it to your head baker, click every button. Whatever you want changed, say it plainly: “make the wedding gallery bigger,” “swap that cookie photo,” “add the gluten-free page.” Changes land inside 24 hours. This doubles as a preview of what owning the site feels like going forward, and it’s a lot less than the hours you’re currently losing to website upkeep between batches.

Day 7, your domain simply points somewhere new. Same web address on your boxes and your window decal, different page underneath. From that point every “wedding cakes near me” search, every referral checking you out before they call, every pickup order flows through a site built to close instead of one built to just be there.

What it costs and what you keep

No discovery calls, no back-and-forth to get to a number. It’s published: $2399£1,899 one-time for the Standard website, $7500£5,900 one-time for the Growth website, which adds lead routing for wedding inquiries, custom branding and deeper SEO. Compare that with what’s actually in your head right now:

The domain, the site, every word of copy: yours outright, in your name. No contract, no monthly fee, nothing to hand back if you leave. A new cake flavor or a holiday preorder banner goes up within 24 hours of a text.

The first 30 days

Nobody should promise you overnight rankings, so here’s the honest version. Google needs a few weeks to fully digest a faster, deeper site before rankings move. What changes immediately is what happens to the traffic and referrals you already have: a bride finds the wedding gallery instead of four blurry photos, a regular orders their Saturday box ahead instead of walking to the shop across town that takes online orders, and you finally have a link worth sending. The leaks close on day one. The climbing in search happens after.

Someday, or this Sunday?

Every month this sits on someday, the same leaks from this series keep draining money: the slow gallery, the DM inquiries nobody answers in time, the wedding that booked the bakery down the street instead. Seven days and one hour is what it costs to shut that off.

Start smaller than a decision: watch the free video walkthrough of a live bakery site and see what day 7 actually looks like for a shop your size. Then decide whether someday finally gets a date.