Aims
Joseph and Lesley at Joseph O’Connell’s Funeral services each wanted a new, more modern website, which also allowed them to interact with their clients on a sensitive and personal level. After some discussion, the idea of allowing relatives and friends to leave moderated comments leaving a message of condolence to their loved one and their bereaved family. This allowed people who could not participate in the funeral to at least leave some kind words to the family of their loved one.
The website had to be designed in a delicate way, funeral care is not something that can be advertised like other services, It was our aim to make more people aware of who Joseph O’Connell funeral services are, whilst getting across their core values and care to each of their families that come to them seeking support.
How we approached it
We had many meetings over the design and development period with Joseph and Lesley (The managing directors at Joseph O’Connell’s funeral services, after the initial meeting we had a good idea of what the clients needed from us and we came back with our initial design based on their specifications. Joseph and Lesley knew exactly what they wanted, which resulted in many iterations and tweaks to the initial design, and over a short period of time the website developed into what it is today.
In terms of functionality, we added a moderated condolence system, which allowed the team at Joseph O’Connell’s funeral services to leave the name, date of passing, date of funeral and a message for the family, which may be a eulogy or something else that the family has requested. Any members of the public can then go and leave a comment as they like, however, each comment must be moderated by a member of the O’Connell’s team, as to avoid any spam, or any kind of unkind words that people may normally leave anonymously. The comments system also requires the E-mail address of the person leaving a comment as another layer of precaution.
The website was made to be as interactive as possible without infringing upon the delicate, and caring nature of a funeral website, we added an animated book using Javascript, and used silent movie banners to make the website feel dynamic and not feel static as most are.
The results
The O’Connell’s received a 1400% increase in internet traffic since having their new website developed by Codelaunch online. They have also had multiple clients specify that they found and chose their services because they found them online and because of how their website looks and what it does. They are at the top ranking in every single google search that was discussed in our meetings.
Working together with the O’Connell’s, we’ve created a beautifully designed dynamic website, which contains large amounts of interactivity and allows the O’Connell’s to interact with their clients like never before.