Consumers today are increasingly savvy yet fickle. As the internet generation transitions into adulthood, funeral homes are starting to take notice. The majority of all searches start online. In fact, Google alone processes over 40,000 searches per second. Your brand along with your ability to generate calls from potential internet customers is more important than ever. Here are 5 things you can do today to immediately improve your web presence and start getting more customers.
1. YourEmail@YourFuneralHomeName.com
It is unprofessional to not have your own custom domain. Without one, you’re communicating that you either don’t care enough about your business to set up a custom domain or you’re not professional enough to set one up. Neither of these will make a good first impression on potential customers.
The good news is that it’s cheap and easy to set one up. Google will help you setup your custom domain for only $5 a month. Additionally, the Gmail interface is probably more user friendly than the email software included in your webhost. Step-by-step directions on how to set up your custom domain email.
2. Create an obvious next step on every page of your website
When people walk into your funeral home, you help guide them to find the information they’re looking for. This should be the same for when people come to your website. The way you guide your website visitors is as important as the way you guide people at your funeral home.
Since you won’t personally be there with your website visitors, you must make it very clear what the next steps are on your website. Some common “calls to action” (CTA) could be for the visitor to make a phone call, submit a form, sign documents, and choose services or pay.
A potential at-need customer would not want to read generic information or see the obituaries of strangers. The design of your website needs to reflect the actions you want them to take. In order to reduce confusion, it’s best practice to have a single CTA on each page. Web visitors typically spend less than 15 seconds on any page, so the more obvious you make it for them, the better.
3. Optimize Google My Business and Google Maps
The first thing people see when they search for your funeral home is your Google My Business page. It’s imperative to take high quality photographs in order to leave a good first impression on potential customers. From the thousands of calls we’ve generated on Parting.com, we’ve learned that high quality pictures were most highly correlated with receiving calls.
Keeping your business page up to date also allows your funeral home to be displayed when people are searching on Google Maps. Since there are over 1.3 million funeral-related searches each month on Google, this greatly increases your visibility to potential customers
4. Claim your Yelp business page
You don’t need to pay Yelp to claim your page. More than likely, your business profile has already been created for you, and you might already have reviews. Claim your page to ensure the information is correct and respond to any (negative or positive) reviews. The customer is not always right, and sometimes families will leave negative reviews for no good reason. No matter the reason, you must respond to them! Every negative review can turn away potential business. This is a chance to tell your side of the story, and let people hear both sides of any possible negative review.
Consumers like to see that businesses are active online and care for their customers. Yelp is a trusted resource used by potential families, so it’s important to be seen in a good light.
5. Track and analyze your website performance
Simply put, to grow any business, you must understand:
- How much money it costs to generate a new customer
- How much money a new customer generates for you
Tracking and analyzing your website performance along side your sales will start uncovering vital information.
Some important questions that website metrics can answer are:
- How much money are you spending to generate a website visit?
- How many website visits generate an Shopper?
- How many Shoppers generate a case?
- Where are these visitors coming from?
- What are they doing on your website?
- What do they want to find out?
You can start uncovering this information for free, when you set up your Google Analytics account.