As we are looking at the memorial market later in this issue following a visit to Stoneleigh, where the National Association of Memorial Masons once again joined the National Association of Funeral Directors for the National Funeral Exhibition this month, I decided to revisit a website I first looked at after the previous Funeral Exhibition in 2009.

It is the site of George Willcox (Granite) Ltd, one of the UK’s top memorial wholesalers. I thought it was pretty impressive when I looked at it after its launch at the 2009 funeral exhibition, but it was freshly launched then and had one or two glitches.

After the site was launched the company that Willcox had contracted to produce it for them went bust, but Willcox liked their work so much that they bought them and now offer a website design and maintenance service themselves.

Owning the company means it is now easy for them to update their site, which they plan to do so their customers, the memorial masons, can look at it with their customers, the bereaved. They are unlikely to want to do that at the moment because the prices shown on the screen are wholesale prices, which the mason will not want to show to his customer. But Willcox want to change that so the mason’s margin is added and a retail price is shown.

There are two areas of the website. One is for the public, showing the memorials and telling them about the different materials and designs available, and one, requiring an account and password, for the trade, where the memorial mason enters the different elements required – the design of headstone or kerbset, different granites, different applied decorations, photoplaques, and so on.

The masons can even add their own designs. A simple form takes you through all the elements – number and size of fixing holes, vase holders, the inscription and all the normal options, adding the price that it will cost the mason as it goes.

Because it is for the trade, it is simple and quick but currently lacks a level of sophistication, such as showing the memorial in the selected material and adding the various elements as they are selected. Including that level of sophistication, along with showing the retail prices, is on the cards with the intention of making the site a useful tool to help retailers trade their customers up.

Willcox have created an online account for all their customers – about 400 of them. Not all of them use it, but Willcox say the number who do is growing and on a Monday, when they process orders received at the weekend, the web can account for as much as 20% of their business.

The public cannot buy directly from the site, but they can find memorial masons who supply the Willcox range there. This search element of the site had one of the glitches when I last looked at it but it has been cleared up.

There are retail prices on the memorials in the public area but they are at the top end of what anyone will charge and the bereaved will usually find they do not have to pay as much as the price shown.

The Willcox site is still impressive, especially when compared with many of the sites of the stone industry, but what constitutes impressive in the computer world moves on rapidly. In 2009 I gave it a rating of 81%. With the glitches smoothed out I give it 89% this time and look forward to the continuing development of this site.