eBook: Are Your Online Obituaries Meeting Family Expectations?

The evolution of obituaries

Over the past decade, online obituaries and memorial web pages have risen in prominence. While there will always be an audience for traditional newspaper obituaries, it is clear that online obituaries will be the more popular choice going forward. It is quite interesting to compare printed obituaries to online obituaries, and the different ways obituaries have evolved. The purpose of a traditional obituary boils down to just announcing the passing and sharing the funeral details. Whereas online obituaries have turned into a place to memorialize the deceased and share so much more than just a few short lines of text. Traditional newspaper obituaries are limited and constrained in many ways when compared to online memorial pages.

Below we detail the biggest advancements from traditional, printed obituaries to modern-day online obituaries.

Two-way interaction

A traditional newspaper obituary is a one-way form of media meaning people can only read the obituary. They cannot share their responses, actively interact, or engage with it. Today’s online memorial pages allow family and friends to post their condolences, upload photos, share stories, and more. This two-way interaction makes these online obituaries places where the community can unite, memorialize, and honor the deceased.

Larger reach & audience

Printed newspaper obituaries are limited in their reach when compared to online obituaries. If an obituary is only posted in a print newspaper, then only those in the local area of circulation have a chance to read about the passing. Online obituaries are accessible to anyone in the world with working internet In a matter of seconds, anyone can access and read an online obituary.

Permanent & cherished memorialization place

Online obituaries are really not just obituaries They provide so much more than just a quick synopsis of someone’s life. They are better described as places of memorialization. Similar to a burial grave or where ashes are scattered, online obituaries are visited by people years later to honor and remember the deceased. While some families may keep the newspaper clipping of a loved one’s obit, oftentimes these are lost or thrown away. People view newspaper obituaries as a source of info whereas with online obituaries they are viewed as treasured places that will be cherished forever.

Themes for each personality

For the most part, traditional newspaper obituaries all look the same. The deceased’s personality is not really displayed or captured with a traditional obit listing. Online obituaries have changed the game here. Most funeral home website providers offer a library of themes with imagery and colors to help display the loved one’s character, passions, and personality. At CFS, we offer over 1000 obituary themes. From sports themes to music themes to veteran themes, we have the perfect theme for everyone.

Why are your online obituaries so important?

These website pages receive the most amount of traffic

By far, online obituary pages receive the most amount of traffic when compared to any other pages of a funeral home’s website. On average, online obituaries are responsible for 75-85% of all visits to a funeral home’s website. Since the obituary pages get so many visits, it is obviously crucial that these pages have a quality user experience, are visually appealing, and offer a great memorialization space.

Therefore, it is important that as a funeral professional you ask yourself:

1. Are my online obituaries easy for families to use?

2. Do the themes, imagery, and colors capture the personalities of the deceased?

3. Do the designs stand out and look modern?

4. Are my online obituaries keeping up with new trends and offerings?

5. Are families happy with the features and tools that come with my online obituaries?

Leave site visitors with a great first impression

Oftentimes, the first time someone hears or interacts with your funeral home comes when they visit the obituary for one of their friends. Their first impression of your funeral home is based on their experience with the online obituary page. A quality user experience with an online obituary means:

• It is simple to share condolences

• The page is usable and looks good on smartphones

• Flower orders arrive on time

• Photos upload quickly

• The page looks good on different web browsers

• It is secure when completing transactions for sympathy gifts

Visitors with any type of negative experience gives them a poor first impression of your funeral home. This puts into question whether they will use your funeral home when their family member passes away.

Families have increasing expectations of online obituaries

Nowadays, an online memorial is not a “nice extra”. Families expect the online memorial to do much more than just share the visitation time and location. They must become a beautiful place of memorialization that gives visitors many options to share their sympathies and honor the loved one.

It is critical to ask yourself, “do my online memorials offer several ways to honor and pay tribute to the deceased?”

If you fall short on these options and capabilities, families will turn to other funeral homes with online memorials that are more advanced.

Minimize the effectiveness of scraped obituaries

Unfortunately, third-party websites continue to scrape and post obituaries from funeral homes. To minimize the effectiveness and exposure of these “other” obituaries, it is crucial that you improve the user experience of your online obituaries. Improving the user experience directly improves the SEO of your obituary pages meaning people will likely find your version of the obituary first. Additionally, if you neglect the quality and user experience of your online obituaries, then these third-party websites can build “copied” obituary versions that outcompete and outperform yours.

Passive form of revenue

If you don’t offer sympathy gifts from your online obituaries, families will simply purchase them elsewhere. They will buy flowers from florists without your help, or source cremation jewelry from retailers like Amazon. Providing more sympathy gift options is helpful and convenient for the visitors of the obituary, and you easily take in a portion of these transactions.

The beauty of this form of revenue is that it requires little to no extra work. You are not offering a new funeral service package that requires more labor and resources. These types of gifts operate completely online and in most cases the processing is handled by outside vendors.

Online obituaries with CFS

Obituaries have evolved a lot and are super important for both families and funeral homes. That’s why at CFS we’ve invested time and effort in producing the best online obituaries on the market. Families are impressed with the innovations of our online obituaries and funeral homes benefit from larger commission checks, more website traffic and exposure, and a boost to their reputation.

Giving your families a better experience

More features

As we discussed above, family expectations of online obituaries have increased and will continue to increase. CFS obituary pages have truly become places of memorialization that families cherish. Our features focus on providing more grief support resources, more ways to pay tribute to the deceased, and more tools to help share your sympathies.

Below we summarize everything our online obituaries can do:

Tribute Wall Service Details and RSVP Social Engagement

Leave messages of condolence, share stories and post photos.

View service details, check in, and get directions for attending.

Share the obituary link through email or on their social media account.

Flower Store

Send flowers to the family from local florists chosen by the funeral home.

365 of Grief

Receive up to a year of daily grief messages and poems.

And use our family-loved, revenue-earning integrations to...

Tribute Book

Turn the obituary into a keepsake book to treasure for years to come.

A Tree to Remember

Plant a tree to memorialize their loved one with a living tribute.

Access a private library of grief videos that provide immediate help.

Fresh, responsive designs

At CFS, we understand that every online obituary page is a representation of your funeral home. That’s why we take pride in creating beautifully designed online obituaries that are visually appealing.

Many other website providers fail to focus on design for tablet and smartphone devices. The user experience can be hurt by slow loading pages, images that are too small or cut-off, and poor functionality. Our team takes extra care to produce responsive designs that work optimally on all devices. used.

At CFS, our design library is unmatched. We offer over 1000 themes to use. We have a theme for every personality. You can start with any theme as a base and customize them further. From the golfer to the gardener to the teacher – we have a theme that is perfect for every individual. Additionally, we are always creating and updating our themes. It is important for us to have themes that are fresh, modern, and that keep up with the latest trends.

At CFS, our design library is unmatched.

We offer over 1000 themes to use. We have a theme for every personality. You can start with any theme as a base and customize them further. From the golfer to the gardener to the teacher – we have a theme that is perfect for every individual. Additionally, we are always creating and updating our themes. It is important for us to have themes that are fresh, modern, and that keep up with the latest trends.

Giving your funeral home better monetary incentives

Higher traffic equals higher profits

You may hear other website vendors promote a higher commission rate. However, be cautious --Higher commission rates don’t necessarily equal higher profits! At CFS, we offer commission on every single flower order, tree planted, and Tribute Book purchased, but we know that if we build more features into the obituary more people will use it and more families will be supported, and in turn more orders will be placed. We believe it is more effective to create online obituaries with the best user experience because that means more people will visit, use and stay on these pages longer. That’s how we pay funeral homes the highest commission checks for the industry.

Direct to florist model

We know flower ordering is a great source of revenue for funeral homes, however, it can also cause several headaches. We’ve found a better way. Unlike other website providers, we don’t use wire services. Instead, you can hand-pick the florists you want, and we handle the transactions ourselves. A major issue with wire services is reliability. Since you don’t directly choose who picks up orders, these florists can be unreliable by not fulfilling orders on time, providing poor flower arrangements, or simply not fulfilling an order at all. This hurts your reputation!

With CFS, each of the florists that you pick will operate a self-managed store within our system. With this, they can:

• Set their own prices, receiving 100% of the amount they define

• Set their own store hours and vacation

• Set the time they need to make flower arrangements

The funeral home’s website marks up the florist’s wholesale prices, and we split the proceeds with the funeral home 50/50. Our margin is significantly less than typical wire services, who usually take an additional 20%.

Positive brand reputation

At CFS, we’ve built online obituaries with the primary focus being the user experience. We create online obituaries that are packed with helpful features, are beautifully designed, and are simple to use. We want every person that visits the online obituaries to have a fantastic experience because we know this reflects positively on the funeral home.