This is a new site to help the bereaved to find the services they need when they have responsibility for arranging a funeral. It is not unique. There are others (www.uk-funerals.co.uk, for example). The National Association of Funeral Directors have a site (www.nafd.org.uk), although that is largely for their members and while it does have a search facility for funeral directors, it understandably only lists their members. And the Institute of Cemetery & Crematorium Management have what they call the Bereavement Services Portal, although it looks as if it has been established as an advertising medium that on the memorial side, at least, looks very much like a work in progress.

Funeralmap.co.uk has some way to go on search engine optimisation, although none of the general information sites have been terribly good at it, so if Funeralmap can get their act together they might be able to move swiftly up the rankings. At the moment I could not find them on the first four pages of Google with any general enquiry involving the term ‘funeral’ or ‘bereavement’ without the word ‘map’. On the other hand, if you enter ‘funeral map’ they occupy the first four places on the first page of Google, so it might only be a question of time before they are also at the front of the list for more general terms.

Funeralmap.co.uk has been established and is operated by Civil Ceremonies Ltd, based in Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire. Managing Director, Anne Barber has more than a decade of experience in the funeral industry during which time she introduced the concept of Civil Funerals to the UK.

The first phase of Funeralmap.co.uk saw listings for crematoria, funeral directors, cemeteries, woodland burial sites, register offices and bereavement support organisations across the UK. They seemed to have forgotten memorial masons, but a category for them appeared within a few days of the launch and Brent Stevenson, of Brent Stevenson Memorials in Blackburn and Blackpool, was first to sign up.

If there are any others there I couldn’t find them when I searched the site at the start of this month (September).

Searching for the services is made easy and there are lots of contacts when you look for funeral directors, cemeteries, crematoria, register offices or bereavement services. I did not look in other areas, but there were no entries for celebrants or florists within 30 miles of Nottingham, where Natural Stone Specialist is based.

Florists and memorial masons have to pay to be listed on the site. A Standard Listing costs £75 (+VAT) for a year and includes your email address and a link to your website, 30 words of text and up to two logos. A Premium Listing is £150 and gets you a photograph, up to three logos and 100 words of text and a Premium Plus listing costs £195 and includes three photographs and 150 words of text.

The information the site contains is helpful and if the bereaved can find it (and they say they had 6,000 unique visitors in the first month, so plenty of people are finding it), this site will be useful to them, which could make it a relevant part of the marketing mix for memorial masons.

This is better than just another directory site. It has plenty of useful information about what to do when someone dies and about coping with the bereavement. And it provides links to other people who can help. I give it a worthy 88%.