By zack

Online obituaries are the heart of any funeral home’s website, with 70% or more of the total traffic of a funeral home’s website is visiting the obituaries. Therefore it’s crucial that the obituaries provide a wonderful user experience and help family and friends easily find relevant information on the deceased and the services, while also sharing photos and memories. But because of the immense traffic that visits the obituaries, it’s equally crucial that they help serve your funeral home’s business goals, by generating leads and revenue.

Given the tremendous importance your obituaries serve to your funeral home’s success, we believe they deserve as much of our attention as anything else we do for our partners. That’s why we have a dedicated obituary guru named James.

Who is James?

James Arama is Funeral Innovations first ever employee, who focused full time on making our funeral home partners’ online obituaries the best in the world. James is a rockstar software developer who studied at Marist College with an internship at Intel Corporation. Not only is he a brilliant geek, but he has an incredible eagerness to learn, which has helped him gain an intimate understanding of the important role online obituaries play for the family of the deceased, their friends and acquaintances who visit the obituary, and the funeral home.

Why an Obituary Guru?

Today, obituaries have become far more than the static listing of the old days. Visitors to obituaries expect an engaging and interactive experience. When done properly, obituaries can even generate hundreds of new leads and significant revenue. Given the importance of your online obituaries, they need and deserve constant improvement.

James works every day to make your obituaries amazing for the funeral homes and the families they serve. Each day, James is adding new features, testing ways to improve the layout, making it easier to buy flowers and other sympathy gifts, and making the obituaries a memorable experience for the family and friends who visit.

What Has James Been Up To?

Many of the changes James makes come directly from our funeral home partners, based on their own ideas and feedback. He also analyzes the performance of the obituaries to see where they can do better. Here are just a few of the ways James continues to make Funeral Innovations’ obituaries the best in the world.

  • Healing Registry – Perhaps James’ biggest innovation was the development of our exclusive Healing Registry. The Healing Registry provides an unmatched personalized experience. Much like a wedding or baby registry, the Healing Registry allows the family of the deceased to choose the flowers and gifts they’d like to receive, and encouraging the visitors to purchase gifts the family actual wants. That way the family gets gifts that they actual want, while friends and acquaintances can rest assured knowing their gift is making an impact. And your funeral homes makes a 15% commission on all purchases!
  • In House Products – As a first of its kind offering, we’ve introduced the ability to sell in house products in addition to the turn-key flower and gift offerings within the Healing Registry. Want to provide Thumbies or Urns from your local inventory while still offering drop shipped flower and gift basket orders that require no work on your behalf? You can do it with our In House Product feature of the Healing Registry. Manage your products, set your price, and let the Healing Registry drive the sales.
  • Mobile Responsive – Over half of your obituary visits will now come from a smart phone or tablet. If your obituaries don’t look and work amazing from a mobile device, you’re going to have unhappy visitors and miss out on leads and sales. Our websites and obituaries all 100% mobile responsive, ensuring they look great on any size device while still reflecting a consistent branding across all devices.
  • Cover Photos – An effective online obituary is one that encapsulates each unique life. Our Obituary Cover Photos let you choose from a library of beautiful photos to frame the obituary, or even upload one provided by the family.
  • Lead Generation – Our obituaries provide 10 different ways visitors can be converted to leads. Each hook encourages the visitor to enter their email address and opt-in to your automated email list and drip marketing. Grow your email list into the 1,000’s with no effort required!
  • Face Detection – Our obituaries magically detect the location of the face in the photo to ensure it’s centered and properly cropped in every obituary image. Just another small way we use technology to seamlessly make your obituaries look and feel amazing to visitors.
  • Memory Market – With our exclusive Memory Market, visitors can transform any photo from the obituary into a permanent keepsake to purchase. They can memorialize their loved ones through personalized products such as photo books, blankets, prints, framed photos, and many more!
  • Funeral Donations – Many families struggle to cover the cost of their loved ones funeral home. Some are even turning to crowd-funding sites to take up collections. With our Obituary Donations, friends and acquaintances can help contribute to the family’s funeral expenses through a secure payment directly from the obituary!
  • Family Portal – The Family Portal lets the deceased’s family manage the obituary, select gifts for the Healing Registry, manage tributes, view obituary visitor’s contact information and share photos, all from their own personalized portal on your website! By providing more control and features directly to the family, you receive their appreciation and gratefulness for your amazing service.
  • Sales Slider – You can actually set exactly how passive (or aggressive) you’d like your obituary Healing Registry to be. Some people don’t want to publicize the sympathy gifts at all, while others like to ensure every visitor has an opportunity to buy a gift that matters. With our Sales Slider, you can set the exact setting to match your comfortable level. Want to maximize your sales? We’ve found that setting the Sales Slider to the highest level increases sympathy product sales by a whopping 58%!

As you can see, James has been very busy, making your obituaries the best in the world. And fortunately for you, James will be working hard each and every day to continue to make them even better!

Your families deserve the best obituary experience available. Thanks to James, we’ve got it for you. Contact us today to upgrade your website and obituaries. It’s super easy to make the change, and it’s far more affordable than you’d think!