Mary Schmidt, Business Developer and Marketing Troubleshooter, shares a recent experience (YIPPEE! WEB!  or yawn, web?) on her blog: 

I’m doing a web marketing plan for a client so I’m once again cruising a lot of web sites in a specific industry. And, once again, I’m finding many absolutely terrible ones. Key here is the difference between YIPPEE! and yawn. It’s easy to spot the sites where the people only have one because, “Well, [yawn] everyone has to have a web site don’t they?”

Our industry suffers from this same compulsion.

It seems just when I finally convince a funeral director that he needs a website, I have to disabuse him of the notion that his has to look like all the others.

ABOVE:  O’Connor-Leetz Funeral Home in Elgin, Illinois
 

People who visit funeral home websites don’t care about a historic building or how someone turned their furniture store into a funeral parlor in 1887. And they cetainly don’t care where your assistant funeral director went to school or how many kids he has.  They care about three things:

Directions to your firm 
Details about a specific funeral
One reason that they should use your firm

Do “Funeral Home History” pages help give a visitor find your firm?  Does a picture of your building (taken in 1953) help someone figure out when Becky’s funeral will take place?  If they want to call you, should they have to click on a separate “Contact Us” page? 

Illustration by pattista

Too often, a website developer begins a discussion with a new funeral home client by asking about the people who work there and the history of the firm. Why? Because it’s easier to talk about “me” (the funeral director) than “them,” as in the people who will really use the site.

I guess as long as egotists (read: humans) are in charge of hiring the web designer there will always be a struggle between doing what feels good and doing what will actually be good.