Quack's 43rd Street Bakery — Website Redesign
Transforming an iconic 40+ year Austin bakery's online presence from a disjointed layout into a story-driven, high-converting digital storefront.
Legacy Site
The original uncurated website featuring raw social feeds and unstyled embed artifacts.
Quack's 2.0 (Redesign)
The new editorial, high-converting digital homepage with curated visual storytelling.
Design Audit Comparison
Overview
Quack's 43rd Street Bakery is a long-running Austin institution — a 4.5-star, 1,700+ review neighborhood favorite known for custom cakes, wholesale baking, and a loyal community following. Their existing website, however, didn't reflect that reputation. It leaned on an illustrated storefront graphic, an embedded Instagram feed as the primary visual content, and a broken/styled map component — undercutting the credibility of a brand voted "Best of Austin."
The goal of this redesign was simple: make the website feel as trustworthy, warm, and established as the bakery itself, while giving the business a stronger platform to sell cakes, drive online orders, and convert first-time visitors into customers.
The Problem
Auditing the original site surfaced a few clear issues:
No brand story
Nothing on the page communicated why Quack's mattered to the neighborhood — no founding date, no mission, no personality beyond a logo.
Inconsistent visual language
A hand-drawn storefront illustration sat next to stock UI patterns (dark footer, generic badges), with no unifying typography or color system.
Instagram as content strategy
The homepage's main visual real estate was a raw, unedited Instagram embed — mixing cake-smash videos, meme reaction gifs, and product shots with no curation or control over what a first-time visitor saw.
Broken embed
The Google Maps section rendered with a visible unstyled white box artifact, which is the kind of detail that quietly erodes trust.
Weak conversion path
"Order Online," "Menu," and "Merch Store" competed for attention with no clear priority, and there was no FAQ, seasonal messaging, or newsletter capture to keep visitors engaged.
The Redesign
A real brand narrative, not just a homepage
The new site opens with an "Est. 1983" tag and a headline — "Austin's Neighborhood Bakery Since Day One" — paired with real interior photography of the counter and baked goods. This immediately establishes credibility and warmth that the original illustration couldn't.
Photography over illustration
Every section now uses genuine lifestyle and product photography — the pastry case, a latte and croissant on a marble table, a wedding cake at a reception. This single change does more to signal quality and craftsmanship than any copy could.
Curated menu highlights replace the raw social feed
Instead of embedding an unfiltered Instagram grid, a "Featured Favorites" card grid showcases four hero products (Signature Chocolate Cake, Ham & Swiss Croissant, Sugar Cinnamon Roll, Key Lime Pie) with names, short descriptions, and an add-to-order affordance — giving the business full control over first impressions.
Story-driven page flow
The page now reads like a narrative rather than a stack of disconnected blocks: Hero → social proof → featured menu items → seasonal promotion → custom cakes & events → coffee program → brand values → FAQ → footer with newsletter signup.
A cohesive visual system
A restrained palette of cream, terracotta, and olive green replaces the mismatched teal-and-navy of the original. Serif display headings paired with clean sans-serif body text give the site an editorial, artisanal feel that matches the product.
Conversion details that were previously missing
A sticky seasonal announcement bar, a persistent "Order Now" CTA in the nav, an FAQ accordion, a newsletter capture in the footer, and a clean "Visit Us" block with hours, address, and a working directions link, replacing the broken map embed.
Outcome
The redesign repositions Quack's from a generic small-business template into a site that matches the strength of its 40+ year reputation — leading with real photography and storytelling, curating content instead of outsourcing it to a live social feed, and giving every visitor a clear path to order, book a custom cake, or learn more about the bakery's place in the neighborhood.