funeral eCommerce is one of the biggest trends in funeral service.

In fact, it’s an industry that’s already worth more than $200 billion. Has your funeral home already tapped into this exploding industry? If not, here’s what you ought to know about it before you begin.

But if you’ve been been using funeral eCommerce to support families and generate a new source of revenue at your funeral home, there’s a good chance you’re searching for ways to increase your store’s traffic, sales or both. If so, there’s a simple formula to follow that I guarantee will help you increase your sympathy store’s bottom line. There are four factors in this formula – Social, Mobile, Simplicity, Helpfulness and today I’ll walk you through them.

By using this simple formula, within no time, your sympathy store sales, customer service, traffic AND sales will improve in more ways than you could ever imagine.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s take a look at the formula:

1. Social

Social media is without a doubt the best way to drive traffic to your funeral eCommerce store. And the more traffic you have on your sympathy store, the more opportunities you create to generate revenue. It’s important to remember that the nature of funeral eCommerce is very dependent on time. When a loss occurs, the family’s friends and community will most likely purchase flowers and gifts (for either for the service or to have sent to the family’s home) within one week of the loss. So keeping this in mind, here are a few ways you can use social media to drive traffic to your sympathy store:

Encourage the family to get social.

By encouraging the family to share the loved one’s social memorial website on social media, you’re not only helping them spread the word about their loss, but you’re also opening up more opportunities to drive traffic to your website. Here’s an example below:

Here is an example of a social memorial website (provided by the f1Connect Website Platform) that was shared by a family member on Facebook. Sharing social memorial websites online will lead to more to traffic on your funeral home’s sympathy store.

Tap into the power of blogging.

Does your funeral home have a blog? (If not, it’s time to get one – here’s why). If you do have a blog, why not write posts that encourage people to leverage your sympathy store? You could blog about ways to support family and friends after a loss or what different flowers mean… the point is to get creative! At the end of your blog post, provide a call-to-action with a link to your sympathy store, and you’ll be surprised by the results. Below is an example of a blog a funeral home wrote on the significance of sympathy flowers.

2. Mobile

Now that there are five times more mobile phones in the world than there are PC’s, it’s no question that you should optimize your funeral eCommerce store for mobile. When a death occurs, there’s no telling where the friends and family of the loved one could be. Wherever they are, they’re going to want to find the information they need immediately, regardless if they’re on a computer or on their phone.

Through user research and testing, we’ve found that people who are visiting funeral home websites on a mobile phone typically take 3 actions: 1) look up service information, 2) share a condolence on the loved one’s social memorial website, 3) send flowers or gifts to show the family they care. Since all three of these actions support the bottom line of your funeral eCommerce store, the opportunities, it’s important that you make it easy for them to complete all three actions within a few clicks.

Here is an example of funeralOne’s funeral eCommerce solution, The Sympathy Store, optimized for a mobile phone. To view the live version of this website, click this image on a mobile phone

3. Simple

One of the most effective ways to increase your funeral eCommerce sales is to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to purchase flowers and gifts. It takes a lot of discipline to focus your user experience on what matters most. The key is to figure out exactly what your website visitors are looking for, and find a way to offer it to them in the simplest way possible. Here’s a couple of ways you can do that:

Keep visitors on your website.

Instead of sending your website visitors to a third party website, choose a funeral eCommerce solution that allows them to purchase flowers and gifts right on your website. Below, you can see French Funeral Homes & Cremations choose a store that plugs right into their website.

To view the live version of French Funeral’s sympathy store, click on the image above.

Make it easy to search for gifts.

Help your website visitors find what they need by offering multiple ways to sort through all of the products on your sympathy store. Try using categories to sort your products into logical buckets and using a search box tool that allows them to find specific items. Another great idea is to let your users sort through all the options by displaying your best sellers first.

The f1Connect Sympathy Store leverages the use of categories to help website visitors easily sort through all the different products it offers.

4. Helpful

Imagine your best friend just experienced a loss in their family, and you wanted to send them flowers and gifts. Now imagine the troubles of trying to find the address to the funeral home, the number to the closest local florist, the dates of the service, the family’s address, etc. Sounds like a lot of trouble, doesn’t it? And the last thing anyone who just experienced a loss wants to go through is stress. Here’s a few ways you can help your families and community by making a seemingly daunting task actually quite easy:

Give them the information they need.

Believe it or not, there are funeral eCommerce solutions out there that actually automatically fill in all of the service information, times, family addresses, and local florist information for your website visitors. However, you can also choose to put the florist information in the loved one’s obituary, or in a prominent place on your website.

Help them find the perfect gift.

Some of the biggest names in eCommerce are well known for the ways they help their potential customers find the perfect product that fits their need. The suggestion box tool below is the perfect way to help visitors choose a gift for the family of the loved one.

Don’t have an eCommerce sympathy store?

Looking for an effortless way to offer flowers and gifts on your website? Click here or give us a call at 800-798-2575, ext. 5 to learn how you can get funeralOne’s Sympathy Store for free!

What other ways have you been able to increase sales on your sympathy store? Tell us in the comments below!

Krystal Penrose

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