What the money is buying
A memorial mason's website has a narrower job than a general funeral site. The family arriving on it has usually had the funeral already. Months have passed. They are choosing something permanent, often for the first time, and they have three questions before they will make contact: what does a memorial like this cost, what will the cemetery allow, and how long does it take.
A site that answers those three calmly earns the enquiry. The bands below are what the market charges to build one.
Band 1: a listing and a Facebook page
Cost: nothing.
You get: a phone number, opening hours for the showroom, and a few photographs.
You do not get: price guides by memorial type and material, a page on permits and cemetery regulations, separate pages for additional inscriptions and renovation, or anywhere for a family to look at your work at eleven at night without messaging you.
Right for: almost nobody in this trade. Families research quietly and at odd hours, and a page that requires them to speak to a stranger first loses most of them.
Band 2: a template or builder site, $600 to $2,000 (roughly £500 to £1,600)
A theme with your logo, a gallery, and a contact form.
You get: something presentable with your name on it.
Usually missing: memorials organised by type and material rather than as one long gallery, any guide to cost, a plain account of the permit process and the wait for the ground to settle, inscription and renovation pages that can be found on their own, and readable type for an older visitor on a phone.
Right for: a small workshop working almost entirely on funeral director referrals.
Band 3: a purpose-built memorial mason site, $2,500 to $6,000 (roughly £2,000 to £4,800)
Built around how a family actually chooses. Memorials by type, headstones, lawn memorials, kerb sets, cremation tablets and plaques, vases and children's memorials, each with the materials you work in and a price guide. A process page covering permits, the wait after a burial, proofs and fixing. Separate pages for additional inscriptions and for renovation and cleaning. A consultation that can be booked online or by telephone, at the showroom or as a home visit. A gallery of real work. Your craft, your accreditations and words from families.
You get: a site that is found for the searches families actually make, answers the cost question before the call, and takes a gentle enquiry rather than pushing a quote.
Not usually included: photography and copy, unless the quote says so.
Right for: an established mason who wants direct enquiries as well as referral work.
Band 4: larger builds, $8,000 and up
Several branches with different cemetery catchments, a designer where a family can choose stone, shape and lettering and see it drawn up, or a workshop that also sells memorial products at a distance and needs stock and delivery handled properly.
After launch
- Hosting: managed WordPress at $20 to $50 a month, or often free on a framework host, in your name.
- Domain: small, annual.
- Booking: a scheduler such as Calendly or Acuity for consultations, free to modest per user.
- Maintenance: a care plan at a monthly fee, which is where price guides, gallery photographs and regulation notes get kept current.
- Photography: half a day in the workshop and the showroom, and permission before photographing a memorial in a cemetery.
Where the band 3 money goes
- Price guides as editable records, by memorial type and material, with an honest note on what moves the final figure: size, stone, the number of letters, gilding, and fixing.
- A process and regulations page that says plainly that the cemetery or burial authority sets what is permitted, that a permit is required, and that ground usually needs months to settle after a burial before a memorial can be fixed.
- Inscription and renovation pages, because families search for those separately and they are a large share of most workshops' income.
- Consultation booking that offers the showroom, a home visit or a telephone call, with the process explained before the family commits.
- A gallery of your own work, filterable by type and stone, not a catalogue of somebody else's designs.
- Speed, local search foundations and tracking, so you know which page produced the enquiry.
Reading a quote
Ask five things. Are there price guides by type and material, and can I edit them myself. Is there a plain page on permits, regulations and timescales. Do inscriptions and renovation get their own pages. Is the consultation bookable online as well as by telephone. Whose name is the domain and hosting in. A quote that cannot answer those is a template quote whatever the figure at the bottom.
Where this sits
Our memorial mason websites sit in band 3 at a fixed price, with the price guides, the process and regulations page, inscription and renovation pages and consultation booking included. The wider approach across the trade is on the funeral and life events page. Whatever your cemetery authority permits, and it varies from one to the next, the site's job is to say so honestly before a family gets attached to something they cannot have.