It’s one thing to simply have a funeral home website.

But it’s another thing to have a successful funeral home website that serves your client families and supports your business. 

And sadly, but truly, not many funeral home websites do that to this day.

If you’re scratching your head and wondering what your families are looking for when it comes to your funeral home website, look no further. 

Here are 7 things your client families are not only looking for, but expect to see when they visit your website:

1. Their loved one’s service information & obituary

Without a doubt, the most common reason that families go online to a funeral home website is because they have recently lost a loved one and they are looking for service information. Therefore, this content needs to be front and center on your website.

Just take a look at Pray Funeral Home’s website below. They know that most people visiting their funeral home website are looking for obituaries or service times. So, they put the links to their Tribute Pages in bold, large text right on the homepage of their website. 

This ensures that friends and family can find the tribute that they are looking for as quickly as possible, and will have an overall better experience on the website. We want to avoid creating a situation where the user has to go clicking through link after link trying to find the information they are seeking.

2. Quick and easy pricing information

The internet has quickly turned the average shopper into a comparison-shopping ninja. It’s never been easier to find the average cost of a good or service, look up local deals in your community, or even talk to other consumers about whether or not they got a great value for their purchase. 

But this isn’t something that should scare funeral professionals. In fact, you should look at it as an opportunity to break down all of the value that comes with planning a funeral service at your firm.

Smith Funeral & Cremation Services (below) makes finding their pricing easy by linking to it directly on their website’s navigation at the bottom of the page. 

According to Big Cat Creative, three things happens when the user can’t find your price list on your funeral home website:

1. People automatically assume it is out of their price range (it’s just human nature!)
2. People would rather not spend the time enquiring when they can just choose someone else who already has their prices listed (it’s 2021, people are impatient).
3. You waste a bunch of time responding to people who aren’t your ideal clients and can’t afford your services anyway (the ones who do enquire aren’t the right ones).

The moral of the story is that YES, pricing should be a main aspect of your website, not an afterthought.

3. Packages and service options

Many times, folks who visit a funeral home website won’t actually find information on service options and packages. Instead, they have to call to find out about these options. Just like pricing is important to make obvious and easy to find, so are your service options. Listing your service and package options in detail gives a potential client family the chance to see the value in what you’re offering, without having to convince them of it yourself.

Below, Marocco Memorial Chapel spells out their cremation packages simply and easily, minimizing questions for their potential client families.

4. Reviews and testimonials

A website without reviews or testimonials is equivalent to seeing a business on Yelp with no reviews: it creates a potential lack of trust. You’d be hard pressed to find a consumer who is willing to purchase something without first seeing reviews or testimonials. Unfortunately, many funeral homes don’t take the time to ask their client families for reviews or testimonials. 

Below, Schoedinger Funeral & Cremation Services puts their reviews (which are plentiful) front and center on their site. This gives potential families peace of mind that they’re in the right hands. 

On the other hand, Dalton Funeral Home encourages families to leave them a review on social media or write them a testimonial. This gives a safe space for families to offer their feedback, and also opens the door for word-of-mouth marketing.

5. Resources and questions answered

Another common reason that the average person ends up on a funeral home website is because they are looking for answers. Maybe they have a loved one’s funeral service coming up and they’re not really sure what’s appropriate. Or, maybe they want to learn how to write a beautiful eulogy that will do justice to their loved one. 

Whatever questions families might have about funerals, they want to be able to have a safe, easy place to go and find answers – and your funeral home website is the perfect place.

Woodyard Funeral & Cremation Services has a Resources page on their website (above) that does a great job at being an all-encompassing educational resource for families.  It covers all things funerals, from what to do when a death occurs, what is proper funeral etiquette, and even breaks down different funeral customs and traditions. Remember that by answering these questions for families online saves them a phone call and saves you time!

6. A way to easily send flowers and gifts

We know you already know this, but just in case you forgot… your funeral home website isn’t just for families. It’s for the community too! The #1 way to support a family from far away is through flowers and gifts (we know you already know this too ;)). So why not make it easy to do that? With an integrated Sympathy Store on your website, you give the community a chance to support your client families, without the stress of handling all the florist details on their own.

Yorktown Funeral Home has experienced great success with their Sympathy Store. They find that with nearly every family they serve, the community flocks to their Sympathy Store. An added benefit to offering families another level of support is creating an additional stream of income for your funeral home. On average, funeral homes earn 25% of every order completed in their store.

Pro tip: To add the Sympathy Store to your funeral home website, learn more here. 

7. An inspiring space to create a meaningful and unique farewell

According to CMA, “People want a funeral director’s help to achieve a ‘meaningful farewell’. That sounds simple, but does your website actually inspire families to create a meaningful goodbye, or does it simply list packages? Hopefully not the latter. In this day and age, if families aren’t given inspiring and unique options, a direct cremation suddenly feels the most appropriate. Families don’t want to have to dig for inspiration when grief has struck. Instead, provide them the inspiration they need to create a unique farewell with your funeral home website.

Schoedinger Funeral & Cremation (one of our favorite funeral home sites, so we had to mention it twice!) does a great job at educating families on the unique and meaningful options they have. In fact, they’ve got a whole page on their website dedicated to unique options. Having these options so easy to find creates an opportunity to serve families better and in a more meaningful way. 

Just take a look at Schoedinger’s Funeral and Cremation Services website (above). They have an entire section of their website dedicated to helping families learn more about what kind of possibilities are out there for their funeral service, and they even have a funeral exploration tool that inspires families to think outside of the box when it comes to how they can honor life. This is the kind of ultimate funeral resource your families are looking for.

Over to you

If you are ready to make the jump to a funeral home website that actually serves your families, let’s chat. Our Funeral Website Success Specialists can walk you through the best options for your funeral home, click here to start the journey with us today.

What other things have your client families found to be important when it comes to your website? Tell us in the comments below!

Rochelle Rietow

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