Franchised bakery chain Bakers Delight has been recognised for its relaunched website taking out finalist honours in the SmartCompany Web Awards 2009 Best Overall Site category.  

The company’s new website www.bakersdelight.com.au was launched in September and has been clocking up an average of over 23,000 unique browsers per month.  

Chris Caldwell, general manager of marketing & operational support at Bakers Delight, said "Our business needed a website that was engaging and informative for customers. The big challenge was to showcase freshly baked bread in a format that aroused the senses the same way that walking into a Bakers Delight bakery does, building a sense of community around the brand and bringing it to life online."

One of the main features of the new Bakers Delight website is the ‘virtual bakery’, a replica of the bakery environment and provides the customer with an engaging product search functionality. The ‘virtual bakery’ provides the user with the option to search Bakers Delight’s range of over 300 products as they would in an actual Bakers Delight, many of them viewed as a rotating 360 degree image. The ‘virtual bakery’ is even manned by a staff member you would expect to see in store.  

Chris Caldwell acknowledged the team at Visual Jazz for bringing the Bakers Delight experience to life online. “With expertise in marketing and brand management, Visual Jazz were able to design and produce something that is leaps ahead of any other website in the baking industry."