You have decided the website has to change. The design is dated, obituaries crawl on a phone, and emails to the old provider sit unanswered for a week. What stops most owners is one question: what happens to twelve years of obituaries? Families still open those pages. They shared the links on Facebook and in group texts, and some read a parent's tribute wall every anniversary. Switching funeral home website providers without losing any of it comes down to seven steps, done in order, before anyone gives notice.
Why obituaries make a switch harder
Obituaries are the busiest pages a funeral home site has. Tribute Technology reported more than 550 million obituary visits across the funeral home sites it runs in the first six months of 2025. Each of those visits began at a link somebody saved, texted or posted.
On many vendor sites the obituary section runs on the vendor's own system, sometimes at an address that isn't your domain at all. A new homepage is a day's work. The archive is what needs a plan.
Strangers land on those pages as well. In the NFDA's consumer study, as summarized by Johnson Consulting, 66.4% of families visited a funeral home's website before they called. A dead obituary link can be the first page of yours a stranger ever sees.
Step 1 of 7 Count what the old site holds
Before you call anyone, log in to the old site and write down what is there. Count the obituaries and note the oldest year. Check whether each one carries photos, a tribute video, service times and a tribute wall. Write down the number of posts on two or three busy tribute walls, so you have something to check against later.
Then list everything that isn't an obituary: the price list, the pre-planning form, staff pages, directions, grief resources. A number on paper gives the job a size you can plan around. It is also the first thing any new provider should ask you.
Count the tribute videos separately. They are large files, and some providers keep them on a separate video service rather than on your site. Ask where they live, because a video that stays behind leaves a blank box on a page a family still visits.
Step 2 of 7 Find out who owns the domain
Your web address carries years of Google history, and it is the one thing you must keep. Ask the old provider which registrar holds it and whose name is on that account. If the provider registered it in their own name, ask in writing for it to move into yours before anything else happens.
Check your email at the same time. If staff send email from the domain, the new provider has to set it up again on the day the site moves. Otherwise messages from hospice nurses and families can bounce on the busiest morning of the month.
Step 3 of 7 Ask for an export in writing
Send one email that asks for everything at once. Ask for every obituary with its full text, dates and service details. Ask for every photo at full size, not the thumbnails, the tribute wall posts with names and dates, and the tribute videos as files. Ask what format the files arrive in, the turnaround, and any fee.
Then read the end of your contract. Look for the notice period, what the provider must hand back, and how long the old site stays up after you leave. Some contracts renew on their own when notice comes late, so put that date on the office calendar today.
Step 4 of 7 Map every old address to a new one
Every obituary has its own address, and families kept those addresses. When the new site goes up, each old address should lead to the same person's new page through a permanent redirect. That tells browsers and Google the page has moved, not vanished.
The old site's sitemap lists its addresses, usually at yourfuneralhome.com/sitemap.xml. Look at how they are built: some carry the name and year, some carry a number. Whoever builds the new site needs that pattern to match each old page to its new one. Ask them for the finished list, and keep a copy.
Step 5 of 7 Keep your place in Google
Ranking is the worry owners raise most, and the steps that protect it are plain. Keep the same domain. Redirect every old page, not just the obituaries. Keep your main pages about the same things, so the cremation page still covers cremation. On launch day, update the website link on Google Business Profile, then send the new sitemap to Google Search Console.
If the old site had a page for every town in your area, or a page for veterans' services, keep those too. Pages like these are often how a family two counties over finds you, and they take years to earn a place in search.
Expect some movement for a few weeks while Google reads the new pages. A site that keeps its addresses, its obituaries and its profile in step gives Google every reason to keep you where you were. Keeping that profile current is part of our funeral home SEO work.
Step 6 of 7 Check the archive before launch
Pick ten obituaries from different years, including the oldest and two from last month. Open each one on the new site, on a computer and on your phone. Check the photos are full size, the dates are right, the service details are there and the tribute wall still holds its posts. Then paste three old links into a browser and make sure each lands on the right person.
Ask the staff member who posts obituaries to do this with you. They know the archive better than anyone. Ten careful checks find the gap that would otherwise reach you as a family's upset call.
Step 7 of 7 Give notice last
Cancel the old provider only once the new site is live, checked and redirecting. A month of overlap costs little next to an archive that disappears early. Keep the export on your own computer as well, as your record if anything was missed.
Tell your staff the day it moves, and post the new site on your Facebook page. From then on, share each new obituary as a link to its page on your site; our post on sharing obituaries on Facebook covers how. Families can send photos for new obituaries from a family portal link instead of a stack of prints at the arrangement conference.
What to ask funeral home website providers
When you compare funeral home website providers, put the same five questions to each. Do you move our past obituaries, and is that in the price? Whose name will the domain be in? If we leave, what do we get back, and in what format? How many weeks until launch? Who drafts an obituary on a Saturday night?
Here are our answers. Our team builds and hosts your funeral home website. Your past obituaries come across during setup, at no setup fee, and the domain stays in your name. Each new obituary gets a memorial page with a tribute wall, the obituary writer drafts from the family's notes for your staff to edit, and the finished page shares to your Facebook page. The plan runs month to month, and the new site is up two weeks after you say yes. The price is set on a call, free and 30 minutes long, with our team.
Rachel Lindqvist
Rachel Lindqvist leads website builds at MemorialBooked. Rachel plans each home's move off its old provider, from the obituary archive to the price list, and writes here about the pages families open first.
