Benin Cake Hub
An e-commerce-style menu site for Benin Cake Hub (by Jay's Barony), a custom cake bakery in Benin City, Nigeria. Customers browse buttercream, fondant, number, and whipped-cream cakes, view per-cake detail pages with pricing and serving sizes, and order directly through WhatsApp rather than a traditional cart and payment gateway.
Overview
A menu-driven ordering site for a local cake business, designed around WhatsApp checkout — the payment and communication method most trusted by customers in the Nigerian local-commerce market — instead of a full cart and payment gateway.
Technology Stack
The Problem
Custom cake orders need back-and-forth (flavor, size, message on the cake, delivery timing) that a rigid add-to-cart flow handles poorly, while most local customers already prefer to finalize food orders over WhatsApp rather than a card checkout.
The Approach
Built each cake as its own detail page (price, serving size, occasion tags, advance-notice window) that hands off straight into a pre-filled WhatsApp message, skipping cart/payment infrastructure entirely in favor of a conversational checkout the target customers already trust.
The Solution
A browsable cake catalog with per-item detail pages, clear pricing and serving sizes, and a one-tap 'Order via WhatsApp' flow on every cake and in the site header, backed by a testimonials section and trust badges (400+ cakes delivered, 5-star reviews).
Technical Implementation
Built with Next.js and TypeScript, styled with Tailwind CSS, using next/image for optimized cake photography across the catalog. Deployed on Vercel, with wa.me deep links standing in for a traditional checkout flow.
Results & Impact
Lessons Learned
- 1For local food/service businesses, removing a payment gateway in favor of WhatsApp checkout can raise conversion by matching how customers already prefer to order
- 2Per-item detail pages (rather than a single long menu) made it much easier for customers to specify exactly what they wanted before messaging
What's Next
Add an order-status tracker and lightweight inventory flags (e.g. 'fully booked this week') to reduce back-and-forth on availability.