Newcastle Artisan Bakery

Newcastle has a thriving handmade and artisan scene - we are especially proud of Blackbird Artisan Sourdough - a local enterprise featuring slow made bread with ancient yeasts.  Carolyn Scott was recently featured in Find Handmade, a magazine style website where Australian artisans share their stories about being successful as stallholders at the local weekend markets.

Blackbird Sourdough

Carolyn Scott of Blackbird Sourdough

Carolyn is justly proud of the whole artisan baker’s skill set – a niche specialty of experienced bakers and chefs whom she calls the ‘band of bakers’ – all aware that by sharing their knowledge they are building the core of artisan bakers across Australia.  It is refreshing to hear an handmade artisan like Carolyn not troubled by imitation or competition – the very idea of a competitor learning your secrets is not what most stallholders fear.  But it is not easy to replicate – with high barriers to entry and set up costs mean it is not likely an artisan baker will be setting up shop on every corner anytime soon.

Carolyn’s own set up story is also worth sharing – after 30 odd years working her family business producing quail, partridge and game birds for fine dining restaurants, she used her chef’s and pastry chef’s experience and turned her hand to artisan sourdough baking.  But it was a few years before she sourced the commercial kitchen at Maitland Gaol as a basis for her enterprise.  Now, with a stellar fit out and enough room to fully pursue her interests, Blackbird Artisan Bakery is truly changing people’s lives.

You can read the whole story here, please feel encouraged to comment and make your thoughts known if you are a customer - I know you are out there.

Newcastle Digital Evolution

Sometimes just switching gears and going for a walk or doing something completely different is extremely effective in focusing your mind on the task at hand.  Just like poring over your new website for hours analysing all the detail to see what you can do to make it bounce more. 

Well, there is a name for this and there is a process to measure and record the effectiveness of your website – it’s called split testing, where two alternate options are given in real time to visitors to your site.  They either choose A or B and once you have a reliable sample of visitors, you can track and record just where you are doing things right and what can be improved.

Split testing is a measureable way of keeping tabs on your website and proving whether certain approaches to marketing and promotions are effective. 

At Newcastle Digital, we like to test your site so it does not become a “Billboard in the Desert” with a single lost traveller stumbling by each week – which is nice and pretty but not much use in raking in extra turnover. 

You want visitors, converted into customers so each morning when you check your email you have a few nice paypal payments and some orders to ship.