Hats off to George Willcox (Granite) for introducing a trade account section to their website where their customers can order the memorials they want, in the materials they want with the finishes and sizes they want. They can select decoration and carvings and add inscriptions. They can choose a base or kerb set and add decorations and inscriptions to those as well.

There are literally billions of possible combinations for the memorials from horrendously large databases, with photographs, that are growing by the day. When you add the variety of bases available to go with the memorials and the fact that customers can include their own designs and inscriptions you begin to understand why there are not more on-line ordering systems quite like this.

The announcement that the website would be launched on 6 July was made at the National Funeral Exhibition in June. Willcox said they had been developing the site since the previous exhibition two years earlier. After 6 July I went on-line to have a look at it.

Visually it is clear with nice lines and colours taken from their catalogue, but an announcement on the home page saying the trade quotation and ordering system would be going live on 6 July was still there three days after the launch. Out of date messages do not inspire confidence. Then my first click to a page that identifies my nearest retailer failed to respond to the field that says ‘try a town or city’. Entering a county from a drop down menu did work, however.

The extensive range of Willcox memorials can be viewed in the public domain where, bravely, recommended prices are shown.

I moved on to the ‘trade accounts’ area. You cannot set up an account on-line but need a Willcox account number, which they gave me so I could explore this area.

Willcox say the trade area is being used by an increasing number of customers, and I can understand why. Whatever the teething troubles of this site, the trade area really is impressive – and in six months or so when the occasional unintelligible pop-up message is sorted out, it is likely to be truly awesome.

My rating for this site now is 81%. In a few months it might be even higher.