The industry has been abuzz this week with news that Legacy.com is waiting for the ink to dry on their acquisition of their competitor obituary host site, Tribute.com. Buzz can be good or bad. Unfortunately for funeral directors everywhere, this week’s buzz is decidedly the latter.
Friday, I pretty much hit the nail on the head when I explained how Tribute.com, with their acceding to acquisition, “…just screwed thousands of funeral homes.” I pointed out that navigating the over-monetized Legacy.com is akin to rounding one of the seven circles of hell. Their product siphons all gravitas and reverence from a form of publication that should forever remain off-limits to woefully shameless advertising tactics. With the reputable Tribute.com soon to be shuttered, it’s a shame that the funeral industry has no one else to turn to.
Well, then I received an email from the creators of Obits.org. Below is what they sent me to prove why Obits.org is better then Tributes.com and Legacy.com, plus it’s free!
Obits.org is a completely free alternative to Legacy.com. The seamless integration between funeral home partners and the families they serve is but one of many advantages Obits.org has over similar sites. The ease of use of the site allows for funeral home directors to create their own unique account with minimal effort or information and $0 out-of-pocket.
Once an account is established, funeral homes are able to present the free memorials to their bereaved families as a value-add to the services they provide. After creating the free obituary, the funeral home can then provide all control and access to the family directly, allowing them to monitor and approve comments, make changes to text, and add additional photographs and other media to the memorial page.
In addition to the many locally written and uploaded obituaries added each day, Obits.com also creates professionally composed rememberances for prominent dignitaries, entertainers, professionals and others, making for a well-trafficked site that helps to benefit their funeral home partners.
The user experience at Obits.org is also very stylish and streamlined. Upon arriving at the obituary address for their loved one, users are met with a beautiful full-screen photograph. The navigation is seamless, allowing one to read about the life of the deceased, browse cherished memories left by friends and family, sign the guestbook, light a candle, and even purchase flowers. Funeral home directors are even able to add their own existing floral link and keep the entire commission on any floral orders as a result.
Ok, one last benefit that Obits.org has over Legacy.com is that their obituaries are housed on the funeral home’s own url address. This is important because it helps to drive the website addresses of their funeral home partners up in search rankings by allowing them to capitalize off of the SEO.
It’s true that many funeral home directors have been wringing their hands wondering what the Legacy.com acquisition of Tribute.com would mean for the user experience of their grieving families. Thankfully, Obits.org presents a very welcome alternative that is more intuitively designed, beneficial for the funeral home partner, and best of all, free.
