How your Families Benefit from a Funeral Notice

The pandemic changed everything about society as we know it, including funerals. With the easing of restrictions planned for June 21st, we want to let you know why we think it has never been more important for families to announce the passing of their loved one and why funeral-notices.co.uk is best placed to offer you this service for your families.

We've talked before about ways funeral-notices.co.uk can help you as a Funeral Director - free online notices, online donations and the opportunity to place notices on your own website, for free. But how do your families actually benefit from the notices?

Unlike many other funeral notice providers, where the onus is on you and the family to make people aware of a notice once published, funeral-notices.co.uk benefits from a huge audience ready to view notices as soon as they're published. Our news sites across the UK, such as LancsLive, YorkshireLive and EssexLive, all have a Funeral Notices tab on the homepage - and this is how a large proportion of our audience come to view our notices every day. With Live sites expanding to cover the whole of the UK, funeral notices may be booked for any location and we know they will be seen by our strong audience.

Don't just take our word for it, in May 2021 there were 1,162,942 unique users visiting funeral-notices.co.uk 2,955,941 times and viewing more 17 million pages.* As soon as a notice is published your families have access to this fantastic audience, helping them ensure their notices are seen and allowing friends, family, former neighbours and colleagues or family now emigrated to Canada, to leave a tribute in memory.

All notices that appear on funeral-notices.co.uk offer families a free tribute service allowing people to add unlimited messages of condolence and photos. People also have an opportunity to reply to tributes directly and we have many instances of family thanking people for their kind words or donation. The tribute reply function allows people to send their email address to the person who left the tribute; helping friends and family stay in touch with one another.

The obituary notice for the late Alison Julian, published by Paul Bourton Funeral Service on behalf of the family, has a number of loving tributes, photographs and online donations added to it. Take a look at it here. The notice itself tells the story of her life, the tributes reinforce the impact Alison had on her community. We hope the notice and additional tributes offer the family some comfort in their time of need.

An online donation service is available on every main notice. These are great for families and Funeral Directors alike as they benefit from our audience making it easier for people to find and donate to the desired charity(ies).

The donation service is available from the moment the notice is published, great for anyone unable to attend the funeral due to restrictions or living overseas etc.

When making a donation, donors are asked to add Gift Aid to their donation, allowing the charity to claim an extra 25p on every £1 donation (25%). They are also asked if they would like to add a condolence message to their donation letting the family know instantly who has donated. This again comes with the facility for families to reply, thanking the donor.

Be it a print and online or an online notice, we encourage people to talk about the person they have lost in their funeral notice. Life is a story that doesn't have to end after death. A funeral notice is an opportunity to continue the story through the wording of the obituary and in the tributes added. We have some people who return to their loved ones notice every day to light a candle and others who use their notice as a place to come back to on important anniversaries or to write to the person they loved to tell them how their day has been.

Every tribute, donation message, photo and candle is moderated prior to being added to the notice so families can be assured they are interacting in a safe online environment.

Take a look at this notice for the late Luba Lawrence, the notice not only tells a little about the story of Luba but also offers a place for family to thank those who cared for her. The donation messages and tributes help to complete her story too - what a wonderful legacy she leaves.

We know people are using social media to announce the passing of their loved ones but why not add a notice to funeral-notices.co.uk too (especially as they are free for Funeral Directors to place on behalf of families).

All of our notices may be shared via all of the popular social media, messaging, email apps and websites. Unlike social media posts, funeral notices are easy to find to return to and visit whenever and wherever you like, offering comfort to loved ones across the UK.

To help you help families to tell the story of their loved one's life, we are currently offering free online notices to every UK Funeral Director.

You may book these using our guide Online Notices or email them to us at fdteam@funeral-notices.co.uk requesting free online.

Now more than ever it is important to offer families a way to connect with family and friends online following a bereavement.

In addition to offering you free online notices, we can provide a link to display your notices on your website too. Check out a previous blog to find out more about that here or contact us using the button below.

If you have any questions on funeral notices, to start your free trial of online funeral notices or for more information, contact us now using the button below. We would love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading. Like all of you we hope all restrictions will be removed later this month and that families start to experience full family funerals like they did before. With over 4.8 million notices published on funeral-notices.co.uk to date, we hope to welcome notices from your families soon: every life deserves a story.

* Source Google Analytics 1st-31st May 2021