I recently had a situation where a customer needed to send flowers to another part of the state. She realized that she forgot to find out which funeral home. While I was waiting for her to call me back, I googled the funeral homes in that city (thought I might stumble on the right funeral home by checking out their obits section).
I noticed that, although some are locally owned, most had sites that directed flower purchasers to a third party site just like the large corporate funeral homes have done. You know the ones that are set up through Florist One or 800flowers.
Then an idea came to me...there are still locally owned funeral homes that are not a part of a chain. Those funeral homes are similar to many brick and mortar florists when it comes to technology. Since they don't know anything about it, its better to go through a third party, just like florists do when they have TF, Bloomnet, FTD, etc take care of their websites.
What if the local florist could offer a website to the locally owned funeral home? The florist would pay for the monthly maintenance with their "order flowers" tab going directly to that florist's website. It would be cheaper for the florist to pay for this than it would be for most advertising. For example, in our area, a small one inch tile ad on the obits of the local paper was $80 a month.
Getting more technical, we have Ryan (Strider) maintain our Strider site. What if he could have some really simple templates to choose from? The florist would show the funeral home owner the choices, help them get it set up and running (filling in the spaces for address, about us, etc) but the florist would be in charge of the site. The florist would instruct the FHO how to keep their obits up to date, etc. The florist would pay an additional fee to the host for the additional site. The site doesn't need a shopping cart so I would think this could be relatively simple as far as sites are concerned.
While I know this idea won't fly with the large corporations, I really do think that there is a possibility of some local FH interest.
Another way of taking back our industry......
I noticed that, although some are locally owned, most had sites that directed flower purchasers to a third party site just like the large corporate funeral homes have done. You know the ones that are set up through Florist One or 800flowers.
Then an idea came to me...there are still locally owned funeral homes that are not a part of a chain. Those funeral homes are similar to many brick and mortar florists when it comes to technology. Since they don't know anything about it, its better to go through a third party, just like florists do when they have TF, Bloomnet, FTD, etc take care of their websites.
What if the local florist could offer a website to the locally owned funeral home? The florist would pay for the monthly maintenance with their "order flowers" tab going directly to that florist's website. It would be cheaper for the florist to pay for this than it would be for most advertising. For example, in our area, a small one inch tile ad on the obits of the local paper was $80 a month.
Getting more technical, we have Ryan (Strider) maintain our Strider site. What if he could have some really simple templates to choose from? The florist would show the funeral home owner the choices, help them get it set up and running (filling in the spaces for address, about us, etc) but the florist would be in charge of the site. The florist would instruct the FHO how to keep their obits up to date, etc. The florist would pay an additional fee to the host for the additional site. The site doesn't need a shopping cart so I would think this could be relatively simple as far as sites are concerned.
While I know this idea won't fly with the large corporations, I really do think that there is a possibility of some local FH interest.
Another way of taking back our industry......
