What Families Want In A Funeral Home Website – Part 2
August 30th, 2011
How Well Does Your Funeral Website Serve the Living?
In my previous post of this series, I shared 3 ways to make Your Funeral Home Website Rise Above the Online Clutter. Now that you’ve engaged your client families, let’s take a look at how you can serve them, beyond the funeral service.
Although funeral homes honor the deceased, their true value lies in how well they serve the friends and relatives left behind. Yet many funeral websites focus primarily on burial or cremation services, missing out on opportunities to be a valuable resource for helping people to heal.
Today’s families are more web savvy, and when you offer services directly from your website, you provide convenience and comfort to families going through a difficult time.
For example, some sites offer grief support, but often only as an afterthought. How much more convenient would it be for families and friends to be presented with direct access to professional support from your website? This way, it’s simple and easy for them to get help to explore their grief from the privacy of their homes.
Here are some ideas for online support services that truly help families and friends:
- Daily affirmation emails
- Online access to professional grief counselors
- Grief support groups
- An interactive grief blog with valuable information and videos
Imagine if you were a family member of the deceased and this death caught you by surprise. Perhaps you were particularly close to the person. You find yourself emotionally upset, but don’t want to burden others with your grief; you know they are suffering too.
You need to talk with someone, to process the events and your intense feelings. Who can you turn to? You notice grief resources on the funeral firm’s website. You click, you sign up to receive emails, you visit their grief blog, you read about what others experience. You no longer feel so alone.
Perhaps you don’t need to see a counselor, but if you do, you know you can find one available to chat anytime. You see on the funeral website there are other resources like support groups and feel comforted just knowing help is only a click away.
Whether before the services, or afterward, a funeral website can continue to serve the friends and family of the deceased in ways never before possible. The convenience of accessing professional help and information online enables people to preserve their dignity and get help from the comfort and privacy of their home computers.
The more ways you can help families in their time of need and beyond, the more they will use your services. Becoming known as a valuable resource through the information and services your website provides—as an extension of your firm—builds your status within an ever-widening community of current and future families.
Does your website provide services for grief and support? What’s been your experience in offering follow-up care?
[…] various avenues that are available, one will be able to decide which one is more suitable for them.Introduction Today, grief is a common thing among people of every lifestyle and race; however, the p… Today, grief is a common thing among people of every lifestyle and race; however, the problem is […]