When someone died, a family member would send for the undertaker, who would prepare the body in the home and lay the person out in the living room for visitation and funeral. A horse-drawn wagon carried the remains to the cemetery for burial.

"When there was a death, my father would be gone for several days to handle the funeral because the roads were usually dirt. Sometimes he would stay with the family until the funeral was over," says Jim, who now manages the business.

Funeral services have changed during the last 71 years, but in a sense, Riffe's Funeral Service is once again making house calls. In 1999, they launched an e-business initiative and became the first funeral home west of Richmond to offer the Family Advisor showroom online, completely eliminating their traditional showroom.

Jim explains they made such a radical change. "Perhaps the single toughest aspect of funeral planning is selecting a casket. Many family members tell us they simply dread the thought of walking into a showroom surrounded by caskets, some even to the point of actually fainting.

Family Advisor has not only relieved some of that mental anguish, but has also offered our firm a greater selection of quality merchandise. That variety, combined with the ability to custom-tailor our products to match their budget, has made going with Family Advisor one of the best business decisions we've ever made."

In addition to selecting products and services, and making preneed arrangements, visitors to www.Riffes.com can also read obituaries, send condolences and flowers, link to airports and airlines to—make travel arrangements, learn about cremation and coping with grief, and much more. Riffes Funeral Service is able to offer all of this online using Aurora Web Templates.

James Riffe, Jr., apprentice funeral director, said Aurora Web Templates are easy to use. "It only took a few days to enter basic information into the template," he said. "The most time-consuming part of launching the site was reserving and activating the URL address we wanted, www.Riffes.com.

"Once we had the bulk of the text content loaded, we hired a photographer to shoot photos of our building and interiors," he added. "Then I imported our new logo and other graphic elements I created to finish out the look of the site."

James says the Riffes use every opportunity to promote their website. "All paid obituaries now contain the web address. For us, this has been the most cost-effective way of letting readers know about the site.

We recently changed our letterhead, business cards, and advertising to reflect our new logo, along with the web address. And we've also partnered with a new local web portal, GilesCounty.net to cross-promote each other's sites."

The efforts are paying off. The website has had thousands of hits and in less than one year, at least three preneed plans have been started as a result of the website.

The Riffes also made the "Funeral Service E-business 200" which recognizes the top 200 companies in the funeral industry that use Internet technology to improve customer service and business operations. "For a small town in rural Virginia, that's a good start," says Jim.