The digital era we are living in requires web presence from any kinds of business, from a clothing brand to a small round-the-corner bakery. Even if you don’t find running your website or social media accounts exciting, they are still essential for jumpstarting your bakery business, because it’s one of the best ways to attract new customers. In this article, we’ll talk about how a website and a POS system bundle can help you run your business more effectively.

Make a Great Baking Business Website

Whether you already have a website or just going to launch one, we want to share a few important details that will help both you and your potential clients to get the most out of it.

First of all, think about the main purpose that your website should cover. Will it be a portfolio for your bakery creations? Or maybe it’s more like an online shop for making orders from your bakery? Or mainly a blog sharing your behind-the-scenes processes? Or, possibly, an information hub with answers to FAQs where you could send your customers to? Of course, your site can combine all of these things together, but there should still be the leading value that your website focuses on. Potential customers coming to your website should immediately understand what they are supposed to do here. That’s why the homepage of the site should be inviting and clear about what you do. This will allow to cut down to the minimum the requests that are not in your repertoire. For example, if you do the fancy wedding cakes only, mention that right on the homepage so that people who were looking for traditional American pies didn’t waste your and their time.

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Generally speaking, the main purpose of having a website is to engage people and make contact with them to turn potential customers into buyers.

When it goes about food, the best way to engage customers is to make mouth-watering photos. Pictures of food make people hungry and eager to visit your bakery, so make sure that your site contains only the high-quality photos of your cakes, brownies, croissants, pancakes, and pies.

As for making contact, ensure that your website has a clear and easy ordering form, contains your phone number and the physical address of your bakery so that people could reach you effortlessly. Besides, it’s very important to leave no comment, question or feedback on your site or social media accounts without a reply.

Integrate Your Website with Your POS System

Many things work better as a bundle: fries and ketchup, gin and tonic, e-commerce website and POS system.

At first POS system integration may seem like a ton of technical nonsense, but it’s easier than you think and the benefits from having the web platform and point-of-sale bundle are significant. It not only eases many operations but also keeps all your data in sync, so the human factor goes down to the minimum and your working process goes smoothly.

So, where to start the integration from? It depends on your current state of retail management operations, but in a few words – the starting point is to find a POS system for bakery and a web platform that work fine together. In case you already have either a site or a POS software, or maybe both of them, the first thing you should do is to contact your POS provider and verify if it can combine with the e-commerce system that works on your site. If you have none of them yet, you have a luxury of building the perfect bundle from scratch.

For starters, learn how the integration works. Which data is shared between the website and the POS system? Is it synced in real-time? In which system do you adjust your current items and add new ones? Inquire about credit card processing. Verify if a POS provider offers 24/7 customer support. And don’t forget to calculate the total cost of monthly or yearly POS and e-commerce integration. All of these questions will help you to figure out what the POS system and web platforms would be the best solution for your bakery business.

Having an omnichannel business is beneficial both for you and for your customers who will be able to choose whether to order of your delicious bakery items online or to stop by and have a Sunday lunch with a freshly-baked chocolate croissant and a cup of latte directly at your cozy bakery. And a POS system for bakery will help you to run a more efficient business and focus more on the beloved cooking than the tiresome inventory.