What's Happening
If you have an existing website through Gather, your site will be moving to SiteStudio - Gather's website platform that gives your funeral home more tools, more visibility, and more direct control over your web presence.
This guide walks you through exactly what that means for your team and what you're gaining access to as a result.
The most important thing to know: When your site moves to SiteStudio, it will look exactly the same as it does today. Your obituary publishing process and case management workflow in Gather are not changing.
What's Not Changing
Before getting into what's new, here's a clear picture of what is not changing when your site moves to SiteStudio:
Your website's design, layout, colors, and content will look exactly as it does today. No visual changes are made unless you specifically request them.
Obituary publishing works exactly the same. Obituaries created in Gather will continue to flow directly to your website and notify obituary subscribers just as they always have.
Your case management workflow in Gather is unchanged. How your team creates, manages, and completes cases stays the same.
Your website address stays the same. Families will find you exactly where they always have.
All existing obituary content and historical records on your website carry over completely.
What You're Gaining Access To
Once your site is on SiteStudio, your team will have access to a set of tools that weren't available before. Here's a breakdown of what's new.
➡️ Make Your Own Website Edits
Your team can now log in to SiteStudio and update your website directly - text, images, page content, and more. You can also continue to request changes through Gather's team if you prefer. The choice is yours.
➡️ Integrated Forms
One of our most highly requested features is coming with your move to SiteStudio: Integrated Forms.
Pre-Need and At-Need Forms: When a family submits a pre-need or at-need form on your website, Gather automatically creates a new case - pre-populated with the information from their submission - so your team can follow up without re-entering anything. The case will be created as at-need or pre-need accordingly.
General Forms: Forms like "Contact Us" or "Employment Inquiries" are recorded in Gather in a website forms report, but do not create cases.
Each team member can also choose which form types they receive notifications for - at-need inquiries, pre-need requests, or general forms - so the right people are looped in without unnecessary noise.
➡️ SEO Information
View your site's search engine optimization details - including page titles, meta descriptions, and performance indicators - so you can understand how families are finding you online.
➡️ Visitor Analytics
See how many people are visiting your site, which pages they're spending time on, and where your traffic is coming from - all from within your SiteStudio dashboard.
➡️ Obituary Subscriber Management
View and manage the community members who have subscribed to obituary notifications from your website. Track your subscriber list and keep tabs on engagement over time.
➡️ Ongoing Improvements
SiteStudio is Gather's actively developed website platform. New capabilities will continue to roll out here, so your site will benefit from improvements over time without any extra effort on your part.
What the Transition Process Looks Like
Gather's team handles the transition from start to finish - there's nothing technical you need to do on your end. Here's how it works:
Before the transition: Our team will reach out to let you know your site is being scheduled for the move. This is a good time to flag any updates you've been wanting to make - team photos, service descriptions, updated contact information, or any other content changes. We can take care of those as part of the process at no extra effort to you.
During the transition: Our team carries over your full website - design, content, and all existing obituary records - to SiteStudio. We work to complete transitions without any downtime to your live site.
After the transition: Your site will look exactly as it does today. We'll grant you access to edit your site and invite new editors. At this point you can access the SiteStudio dashboard so you can start exploring the tools now available to you.
Have updates you've been meaning to make? The transition is a great opportunity to refresh your site. Just let us know when we reach out and we'll handle it alongside the move.
Common Questions
Will our obituary publishing workflow change?
No. Obituaries are published through Gather exactly as they've always been. The move to SiteStudio has no impact on how you create and publish obituaries or how they display on your site.
Do we have to start managing our website ourselves?
No. The ability to edit your site directly is available to you, but it's entirely optional. If you'd rather continue having Gather's team handle website changes, we're here to help just as we always have been.
Will our website go down during the transition?
Nope! Our goal is to complete every transition without any disruption to your live website. We'll communicate with you directly about timing before anything happens.
Is there an additional cost?
Nope! Gather is committed to offering our existing funeral home customers state of the art software that improves as we do. Therefore: there is no additional cost for the transition to SiteStudio. If you have specific questions about your plan or subscription, reach out to your Gather account contact.