A FUNERAL SITE? Can you believe it?

15 years ago

Chances are if someone finds your site, someone they loved has already recently died. The title of your list giveaway ebook might be construed as insensitive.

Other than that, very nice looking site - seems to be very informative.

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WendellC

15 years ago

Scott -

Hi.

A couple of ideas:

1) You may want to reconsider the color scheme. I know in the US it's somewhat traditional to wear black to a funeral. However, all the black on your site might be considered a tad gloomy and depressing.

People who are doing funeral research are probably already feeling a bit down so perhaps some more uplifting colors might put people in a better mood. I'm not saying that you should put party colors -- maybe just something more toward earth tones.

2) If you are going to have Adsense on the site, you might want to make sure that you exclude any ads that might not fit into the funeral theme.

Just a thought.

Wendell

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Nonny

15 years ago

My dad passed away a few months ago, so I have recent experience looking for funeral information online. I would have clicked away from your site immediately because it looks like a tacky MFA site. The articles are so generic, they aren't useful information at all. And honestly, at the time I would have been insulted that someone was trying to blatantly profit from my grief.

Originally Posted by clickguy

1) You may want to reconsider the color scheme. I know in the US it's somewhat traditional to wear black to a funeral. However, all the black on your site might be considered a tad gloomy and depressing.

People who are doing funeral research are probably already feeling a bit down so perhaps some more uplifting colors might put people in a better mood. I'm not saying that you should put party colors -- maybe just something more toward earth tones.

Yes this. You might want to take your cue from the web sites of funeral homes, which often use peaceful and soothing pastel colors.

The navigation links seem to be inappropriate to me to. There's the "Health" link, for example, which leads to a page with generic funeral information targeted to New Haven Connecticut. And "Elder Care" goes to a page with suggestions for funeral planning. I find that to be insulting. I find the hyperbolic title of the article "How To Avoid A Disaster When Purchasing Your Funeral Flowers", but seriously, people planning a funeral aren't going to consider slightly wilted flowers "a disaster".

And I think one of the problems is that you haven't clearly divided up your site into "pre-planning" information and "right now for the funeral" information. Those are going to appeal to two different groups of people. Pre-planners don't need to know about buying flower arrangements or renting limos (WTF?), because those can only be arranged after death. People looking for information after a death of a loved one aren't going to be interested in pre-planning, but are going to be interested in buying flowers and possible readings for the funeral and the funeral and burial laws for their state (among other things). In both cases, a directory of the addresses, phone numbers, and web sites of funeral homes organized by state would be useful.

Originally Posted by clickguy

2) If you are going to have Adsense on the site, you might want to make sure that you exclude any ads that might not fit into the funeral theme.

I think the Adsense text ads look tacky in this context, and many are inappropriate. Right now on the flowers and limo articles I'm seeing ads for BlackPeopleMeet.com (a dating site) and SimpleMillionDollarSystem.com (a get rich quick site). On the front page are ads for marriage counseling and life coaches. Not only are they insulting to potentially grieving visitors, but people are unlikely to click the ads since they are so unrelated to your site.

Also, the Adsense links aren't "Featured Products" as your heading would suggest. That's a term that seems way out of place on a funeral-related site, since someone researching funerals isn't looking for "products". Why not put ads for a florist affiliate program (or similar) instead?

~Peggy

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Loren Woirhaye

15 years ago

Scott,

great niche. Everybody eventually needs what you offer so
it's truly mass-market and has wide appeal.

There are many states of mind people will research this topic
in however.

1) people who are old and nearing their time and want to
plan things out so their families aren't burdened. They've
lived full lives.

2) people who are planning because they themselves or
a member of their family is going to die soon, and they
want to make arrangements early.

3) people who've experienced a sudden death in their
families. Shock and grief are the dominant emotions.

See? There will be other categories too.

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JeremyHoover 15 years ago

Scott--

You might even consider marketing your site and ebook to ministers of all faiths. It could be a good resource they could use and they could steer congregants to your site if they think your content/ebook would be valuable for for congregants who are dying or have experienced a death in their family.

Jeremy
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rapidscc

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Loren Woirhaye

Scott,

great niche. Everybody eventually needs what you offer so
it's truly mass-market and has wide appeal.

There are many states of mind people will research this topic
in however.

1) people who are old and nearing their time and want to
plan things out so their families aren't burdened. They've
lived full lives.

2) people who are planning because they themselves or
a member of their family is going to die soon, and they
want to make arrangements early.

3) people who've experienced a sudden death in their
families. Shock and grief are the dominant emotions.

See? There will be other categories too.

Hi Loren,

I don't agree that it has wide appeal..coz for me it's not appealing to think of death..Although I agree that we will all be thinking of it someday..

Scott,

I agree with loren, you have a wide market (but not appealing). Probably a small competition too..I didn't checked out google..too lazy.

It's a professional site, good graphics, probably nice content too but...

With your theme..funeral and all (buying flowers, mourning) IMHO the free ebook that pops out.."Don't Die Broke" is not appropriate. I don't think I will click on that after knowing that your site is about funerals even if its free..It's like I'm being flooded by death..And if im there because I know somebody who's going to die soon, the least I would think of is about making money..

But that's just me..

oMar

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MisterMunch

15 years ago

The free eBook... A little late isn't it? The person is already dead.

I actually found it a little insulting.

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landing-page-dude

15 years ago

Hi Scott,

The one thing that sticks out to me is you said the purpose of the site was to generate leads for funeral, cemetery, and cremation prearranging. Well the site has too much information for a lead gen site. It looks like you are trying to educate people about everything dealing with funerals and such, rather than specifying on helping people choose the right services for their loved one.

Plus, lose the "don't die broke" book...it has nothing to do with generating leads for funeral, cremation, and prearranging. That or change the title of the book.

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Loren Woirhaye

15 years ago

I use Appeal as a copywriting term - it's sort of the
juice in an offer - the "what's in it for me?"

Actually people in pain are the most motivated buyers,
the pain in this case is likely to be in the pocketbook
area - so the appeal is likely to be "here's how you handle
this death issue neatly and without breaking the bank".

See?

I didn't mean to imply appeal as like sex-appeal.

Sorry for any confusion. I use the word as Robert Collier
does in his "Letter Book"... to describe the hook that
turns the browser into a buyer. If you get the appeal
right you can mess-up in several other areas and still
make money... but if you get it wrong and roll-out in
a big way you'll always lose money.

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InternetMarketingIQ

15 years ago

Gardners themes are horrible for adsense...and more is not better.

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Scott Woodside

15 years ago

Wow, great information and feedback. Thank you so much for all of the advice. I hired someone to do everything for me because number one, I can't, and number two I don't have the knowledge to do a site like this.

I will send my web person this warrior forum link and hopefully he will see where he needs to improve.

Thanks for everything!

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Kay King

15 years ago

When a person dies in old age and that too after being literally invalid for a long time, there is less pain and more relief that the old one got relieved and the family members though with little pain of the loss of one family member. In most such cases when the person is invalid and becomes a sort of burden to all his/her death is welcomed though

Death is never partial...

Did you read the text that was written for the site? Much of it reads like bad PLR content.

Also - you have adsense below a header "featured products" which may be a violation of google's TOS. And an ad for legal zoom next to the header.

It looks like it could be a good niche but the site is busy and looks too commercial to me. I wouldn't stay on it more than a minute - but you'll need to test it a while to see if in that minute the user's leave via clicking adsense or not.

kay

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VegasVince

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Kay King

Did you read the text that was written for the site? Much of it reads like bad PLR content.

Also - you have adsense below a header "featured products" which may be a violation of google's TOS. And an ad for legal zoom next to the header.

It looks like it could be a good niche but the site is busy and looks too commercial to me. I wouldn't stay on it more than a minute - but you'll need to test it a while to see if in that minute the user's leave via clicking adsense or not.

kay

Ditto:

Damn Kay...you must have a tin can with a long wire hooked up to Vinnie's brain

My thoughts....

Great OFFLINE NICHE.....but a BAD INTERNET NICHE....unless you're a brick and mortar funeral home...promoting your specific home town funeral services.

Here's why this fails....

I do not believe for one second the majority of the world...shops around for a place to stick Uncle Harry in the ground...in the same manner they shop around for the cheapest hotel room in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What's interesting is the fact...this is one of the very few BAD internet niches I can think of.

Truth is..... I can't think of too many peeps who would feel the need to google search discount funeral homes...in order to find a place to plant their dearly departed.... after he or she shoots snake eyes.

xxx Vegas Vince
Legend.

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peter gibson

15 years ago

Scott, I'm gonna pipe in here because this is a personal subject to me. You are not likely to be happy about my review, but you did ask.

1. "Sign up to receive breaking news
as well as receive other site updates!"

What in the world would make a grieving loved one interested in that subscriber tag? Unless you can update them that their loved one has come back to life, no one is going to be signing that list. I would feel sick to my stomach reading that.

You need to have a line that comforts and sooths, not shouts at them. Something like "feel free to enter your email for further assistance". And no exclamation point! Come on mate!

2. The site is far too Gothic. Others were spot on in telling you to lighten the colors. You want enriching or neutral earthy tones. Also, your picture selection is abysmal. You want pictures of families hugging, symbols of faith, green pastures, e.t.c... Having a pic of a grave stone over a dark theme? It would do you as much good to have a dark red pentagram with the tag-line "Your Life Is Going To Suck Now".

3. The articles are dodgy. This kind of site will not work with cheap PLR content. You will need a very skilled writer to know how to speak to people in need of comfort and answers. Some of that content is morbid and depressing.

4. Lose the adsense. No really. Stop reading and go to the admin panel and deactivate the plugin. Adsense has a knack for occasionally running ads that have nothing to do with the site content. I wouldn't want anyone who's father just died of colon cancer to hit your site and see an ad for colon cleansing, or maybe "live longer with raw foods!" If this happens even once per 500 visits then the chump change you may earn is just not worth it.

5. You should concentrate on offering some immediate help. That's what your customers will want. Put up a great deal of non profit help links, inspirational quotes, grief councelling psychologists, group therapy specialists. Canvas around and make an offer to place the ads on your site for some cash. Monetize this site carefully because just about anything out of context could be considered an insult to some people. When they arrive at your site's "doorstep", they are normally in an extremely sensitive condition and you don't need to alienate them further.

I am taking the time to say this because you can actually do very good things for people in need with this kind of niche. Trying to get by with a cookie cutter formula is not going to work.

Thanks

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scdayton

15 years ago

I agree totally with what others have already said like...

1. Colors to dark and depressing.
2. Grave stones as a picture! As already mentioned people consoling each other, hugging, stuff like that.
3. The Adsense has to go. Flower shops, sympathy cards anything that is tightly related to the event or those closely to follow that are tasteful and don't upset already distraught individuals.

One I hadn't seen anyone mention was the small white text as part of the Flash slide show. I'm 43 and am at a common age when people lose their parents (lost my mom a few weeks ago) and I had a really hard time reading that text. One because it was white on black background and two it's simply too small.

-Stephen

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artwebster

15 years ago

Do you want the real truth or do you want marketing fantasy land?

If it is fantasy land, read no further.

The real truth is that your site is addressed to a very large and growing market BUT IT IS TOO BLOODY BUSY!!!!!

What are you trying to do? Are you trying to help people save money on future funeral costs, educate them on how to cope with a loss or do you simply want that damn great hoarding out there saying "Look how brilliantly technical my site is!"

You are taking a real human concern and trivialising it. Slide-in one - Sorry for interupting - what the hell is that supposed to be about? If you were sorry, you wouldn't be interupting! Slide-in two simply compounds the stupidity.

You have totally failed to understand the people who inhabit this market. They fall into three distinct categories, the elderly, the sick and the families of the elderly and sick. Three categories with but one thought - how to afford the best send-off possible and avoid the last minute decisions that often turn into expensive mistakes.

These are not potential subscribers to some fatuous list. These are not people who will be looking for constant emails with ever more strident sales messages.

Your market consists of people with a real concern. Your market consists of people looking for an answer NOW. Your market consists of people who do not comparison shop. They buy where the compassion is. They buy where the message is comfortable. They buy because when they start searching they are not seeking options, THEY ARE SEEKING A SOLUTION THEY HAVE ALREADY DECIDED TO PAY FOR!

Forget that you are an internet marketer and revert to being a human. I deal with people faced with the potential loss of a loved one on a regular basis - I could not send a single one of them to such a pathetic site. It would ruin my reputation!

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artwebster 15 years ago

Because I thought I might have been too personal in my review of your site, I had another look. I have a lot of direct personal experience of death and the supporting of those having been bereaved by a sudden, unexpected death, I read some of the posts to see if there was agreement on principals.

What language were these posts written in? If these have been written by someone with English as their mother tongue, they must have tried to indicate a facility with the language that they do not have.

Maybe you should review some of the posts and correct the language. My suspicion is that these posts are 'spun' from others and have been subjected to a cursory thesaursus revision. The following random extract is typical -

The word 'mourn' is directly associated with the sense of loss and specially loss of human life such as death. The semantic of 'mourning is that in an assembly we pray for the eternal happiness and peace of the departed soul and we wish for his/her salvation. And this is the basic theme of a condolence.
We do condole now when we talk of any condolence meeting or condolence gathering we comprehend it from our own perspective.

Apart from the keyword stuffing that seems to be taking place, have you any idea what this post is trying to say? I have underlined the words that indicate to me that this is the product of a simple thesaurus spin. (At least I had a little chuckle trying to work out a cause of loss of human life other than death.)
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CmdrStidd

15 years ago

I have seen some people talking about just the adsense ads under Featured Products but you seriously need to lose all the adsense ads on these pages.

Also, I hope you did not pay this person much to do this site since he clearly did not follow any logical organizational method to getting it done. It is clearly something that was thrown together in about an hour. You want proof, click on the about link and see the generic filler used in all wordpress sites. He did not even take the time to fix that up with any kind of useful information.

As for the color scheme, I agree that it needs to be redone but not for the reasons the others have given. The fact of the matter is that you are going to have people of all different walks of life coming to this site. Many cultures do not believe in using black at funerals, like Hindu's, several Oriental cultures and even many tribes of Native Americans. The first 2 actually wear white at funerals instead of black and the Native Americans will wear more earth tones.

I realize that you want to jump in with both feet on this niche but it seems to me that neither you nor the person you got to put up this site have done any real research into the topic. I would highly recommend that you take a few days to really research the topic well and then go back and look at the site and you will see for yourself all the things that are wrong with it.

Also, you might consider finding a decent ghostwriter to write your informational articles. The articles just do not project any level of caring on your part and with this kind of niche, caring is the name of the game. This is one niche that you cannot work it like the majority of ebooks and "gurus" tell you to because of the greater need for caring and empathy towards your visitor.

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VegasVince

15 years ago

Originally Posted by CmdrStidd

I have seen some people talking about just the adsense ads under Featured Products but you seriously need to lose all the adsense ads on these pages.

Also, I hope you did not pay this person much to do this site since he clearly did not follow any logical organizational method to getting it done. It is clearly something that was thrown together in about an hour. You want proof, click on the about link and see the generic filler used in all wordpress sites. He did not even take the time to fix that up with any kind of useful information.

As for the color scheme, I agree that it needs to be redone but not for the reasons the others have given. The fact of the matter is that you are going to have people of all different walks of life coming to this site. Many cultures do not believe in using black at funerals, like Hindu's, several Oriental cultures and even many tribes of Native Americans. The first 2 actually wear white at funerals instead of black and the Native Americans will wear more earth tones.

I realize that you want to jump in with both feet on this niche but it seems to me that neither you nor the person you got to put up this site have done any real research into the topic. I would highly recommend that you take a few days to really research the topic well and then go back and look at the site and you will see for yourself all the things that are wrong with it.

Also, you might consider finding a decent ghostwriter to write your informational articles. The articles just do not project any level of caring on your part and with this kind of niche, caring is the name of the game. This is one niche that you cannot work it like the majority of ebooks and "gurus" tell you to because of the greater need for caring and empathy towards your visitor.

Doesn't anyone around here think about the product or offer anymore????

Doesn't anyone feel the need to tell this guy...that in order to make money you have to have a niche that lends itself to hungy buyers???

I've been around long enough to know.....that the problem with this site...aint got nothing to do with fonts, colors, articles et al.....it's a loser! It's a loser of a niche on so many levels and most of you know why.

Anyone who is honest....and wants to help this guy....needs to look at what he is ultimately trying to sell!

People are not banging google adsense ads....in this niche! No matter how sexy the friggin ads are!

Is there one Warrior on this forum who can honestly say they ever google price shoped places to stick Aunt Tilly???? I'm serious. And if the answer is what I think it is....why go FURTHER!

Enough talk about mediums!!!! Bells and Whistles will never be enough to cover up a loser of an offer...and this offer is death! Literally!

xxx Vegas Vince
Legend.

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artwebster

15 years ago

Doesn't anyone around here think about the product or offer anymore????

Doesn't anyone feel the need to tell this guy...that in order to make money you have to have a niche that lends itself to hungy buyers???

I've been around long enough to know.....that the problem with this site...aint got nothing to do with fonts, colors, articles et al.....it's a loser! It's a loser of a niche on so many levels and most of you know why.

Anyone who is honest....and wants to help this guy....needs to look at what he is ultimately trying to sell!

People are not banging google adsense ads....in this niche! No matter how sexy the friggin ads are!

Is there one Warrior on this forum who can honestly say they ever google price shoped places to stick Aunt Tilly???? I'm serious. And if the answer is what I think it is....why go FURTHER!

Enough talk about mediums!!!! Bells and Whistles will never be enough to cover up a loser of an offer...and this offer is death! Literally!

I have been honest with this guy, as you put it, and I have also got the necessary experience to know that he is addressing a growing niche that wasn't so small to start with.

It's just a pity that, having started the topic, Scott has not been back to see what has happened or to respond to what others have said. I wonder why he bothered.

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CmdrStidd

15 years ago

Originally Posted by artwebster

It's just a pity that, having started the topic, Scott has not been back to see what has happened or to respond to what others have said. I wonder why he bothered.

Actually he has been back a few times as he and I have talked through the PMs. He is interested in what everyone is saying AND he has forwarded the threads link to his developer so that they can see for themselves the recommendations of the pros are.

As to the one that thinks this is a loser of a niche, I have taken niches that the so called experts said were losers and I am currently marketing them. There is a way to market anything. I have a friend that can sell ice cubes to Eskimos and electric heaters to Jamaicans so don't ever call any niche a loser. Just because you can't make money in it does not mean that other people can't.

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Mac2x

15 years ago

very nice looking at this site

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JeremyHoover 15 years ago

I still contend, notwithstanding some of the valid criticism that OP needs to clean up the site and content, that this is a valid niche for religious professionals of many persuasions.

We deal with people who, while they may not think on their own to search for this kind of product, could be pointed a such a resource during their time of crisis.

If the OP focused on relationship marketing with religious professionals, he may find a solid customer base for his funeral niche.
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