The usual state of things
On most funeral websites we look at, the prices are a PDF. It was produced in a word processor, exported, uploaded once, and it has not been touched since a supplier put a coffin price up. Nobody in the office can change it without asking whoever built the site.
That is two problems in one. The information a family needs is behind a download, and the figures on the site are not the figures you are charging. Everything below is about turning that into a page you can edit yourself.
This is orientation, not legal advice. The requirements differ by country, they change, and the version that matters is the one your regulator or trade body publishes.
What the rules broadly ask for
United Kingdom. The Competition and Markets Authority's funerals market investigation order requires funeral directors to display a standardised price list, with prescribed headings and wording, covering an attended funeral, an unattended funeral where offered, and specified individual items, alongside a statement about third-party costs. There is also an additional options price list and a disclosure of interests covering ownership and business relationships. These have to be displayed at the premises and prominently on the website, not tucked away. Crematorium operators have their own obligations. Read the order itself and your trade body's guidance for the exact wording, because the wording is part of the requirement.
United States. The Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule is built around itemised disclosure: a general price list given to anyone who asks in person about arrangements, a casket price list and an outer burial container price list shown before the goods, price information given over the telephone on request, and an itemised statement of the goods and services selected. The Rule has historically been framed around in-person and telephone disclosure rather than websites, and the FTC has been consulting on updating it to address online prices, so check the current position rather than assuming either way. Some states impose their own requirements.
Elsewhere. Australia, Canada and several European countries have their own transparency rules, and some are set at state or provincial level rather than nationally.
Related trades. Will writing is regulated differently again, and in some jurisdictions it is not a reserved activity at all, so the obligations come from consumer and advertising law and from your professional body's code rather than from a funeral regulator. Celebrants and memorial masons are generally outside these regimes, but a clear fee or price guide is expected by families and by the funeral directors who refer work.
What that means for the website
Build the price list as a page, not a document. Each item is a field: name, price, and where required a short description. The page renders them in the layout your regulator specifies. Staff edit a field and the page is correct the same minute.
Keep the required format exactly. Where headings and wording are prescribed, do not improve them. Put your own explanations underneath.
Put the additional options and disclosures where they are asked for. In the UK that means the additional options price list and the disclosure of interests as their own clearly linked pages, not a paragraph at the foot of the main list.
Make it easy to find. Linked from the main navigation and from the home page. A family should not have to search for it, and in the UK prominence is part of the obligation.
Make it readable on a phone. Long price tables break on small screens. Render them as stacked rows on a phone rather than a table the visitor has to pinch.
Add plain English alongside the required format. A short paragraph in your own words about what a simple funeral includes, what disbursements are and why they vary, and what typically costs more. The prescribed format is the floor.
Do not name tiers. Attended, unattended, burial, cremation. Not Reflection and Legacy.
Date it. "Prices effective from" at the top. It tells a family the page is looked after, and it tells you when you last checked.
Keeping it current
- One named person owns the price page.
- It is checked whenever a supplier price changes, and on a fixed date each year regardless.
- The printed list at the premises and the page on the site are updated in the same task, because a mismatch between them is the failure that gets noticed.
- Anyone who answers the phone knows the page exists and can quote from it.
- Save a copy each time you change it, so you can show what was published when.
The most common failures
A PDF. A photograph of a printed card. A price page requiring a developer to change. Figures that do not match the printed list. The disclosure of interests missing entirely. A pre-paid plan page with no explanation of how the money is held or what happens if the firm changes hands. And package names replacing the required item names.
Where this sits
Price pages built as editable records in the regulator's format, with the additional options list and disclosures alongside, are part of every build on our funeral and life events websites page, with the detail for funeral directors set out separately. Getting it right is not only compliance. A family that can see the cost without asking is a family that phones you rather than the next result.