The brief
Hadaway & Denton are an independent, family-run firm of funeral directors based in Ashford, Kent. Carl Denton, his partner Jo Denton, and Carl's father Barry Hadaway have built one of Kent's most respected funeral practices on care, transparency, and the kind of quiet excellence that earns testimonials like the one from The Good Funeral Guide: "the exact type of funeral director every town should have."
The brief was sensitive and serious. They came to us with a website that didn't reflect the calibre of the work they do — and, more importantly, didn't help families at the worst moment of their lives. They wanted something that felt warm, dignified, and quietly modern, with the practical depth to guide a bereaved family through every option without overwhelming them.
How we approached it
We started by listening. Carl and Jo walked us through the full arc of what a family experiences from the moment they call — the questions, the decisions, the worries about cost, the things people are too afraid to ask. Every design and content decision flows from that conversation.
The result is a website built around service pathways — eight distinct routes a family can take, from a traditional personalised funeral to an attended pure cremation to a horse-drawn cortege. Each pathway has its own dedicated page, its own pricing, and its own tone. Families never feel pushed; they're given space to find what fits.
Underneath that sits a local SEO architecture covering Ashford, Canterbury, Folkestone, New Romney, Maidstone and the rest of Kent — each town with its own landing page, so a family searching "funeral director Canterbury" lands on a page that speaks to them, not a generic catch-all.