Detours Music Services

Detours Music Services


Website Construction

Available for the production of low-cost websites for small businesses or personal users who wish to gain an 'internet presence' at minimum cost -

for advertising/information purposes

or selling products/services over the internet

What is a website?

A website is generally a presentation stored on a large computer that anyone with Internet access can view. A web page is simply a file of text written in a code called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which tells the visitor's web browser how to display the content of that page. A website is a great business tool, if used wisely. Website costs can run into thousands of pounds, with graphic designers charging over 50 quid plus VAT per hour. At present Detours Music offers low cost, professional, uncluttered websites that use HTML, javascript, limited flash and other tools in ways to enhance presentation. They are easy to navigate and uncluttered.

Those customers requiring absolute cutting edge, state of the art sites based around Flash would be best to pay a professional graphic designer to do the job, and we can certainly point you in the right direction of people that we endorse for such projects. If we feel we cannot meet your requirements, we will certainly say so. But for those of you wishing to keep costs down, the websites that we can offer have a very professional look and should suit most small businesses or individuals. Check out the rest of this site, and many of those on our links page for examples of our work.

How much do Detours Music charge for constructing a website?

Please note that there are annual and biannual costs that are not connected with the actual designing/constructing of websites. Firstly you must register a domain name which then requires renewing every 2 to 10 years. Also, for a large website that will use a large file size, a web hosting account must be purchased and then renewed annually. You can either get us to arrange all this for you, or do it yourself. For small websites you may use space on our own account and use web forwarding/URL masking - see Frequently Asked Questions.

Then there's the designing, constructing, publishing and maintenance (i.e. updating). Every project is custom made, therefore it is impossible to publish accurate pricing details. Detours Music is a small business that caters for the small businesses, bands and artistes, and believes in giving high quality at an incredibly competitive price. We pride ourselves on taking the time to learn what type of website the customer really wants, and needs, and then we can put a price to the project.

Planning a web site
This the most important aspect to consider, it is also the area where you will save most money. You need to consider the size of the project, what graphics and size of graphics you need, the theme of the project, load speed, quality of the site, the features you want, the audience you want to attract, how the navigation is done, and very importantly the web address or name you wish to use.
A web designer will generally charge for major changes at the construction stage.

Questions you should address are...

What is the purpose/intention of the site?

What do you wish the site to achieve?

WHAT size is the project?

Where is the content coming from?

Who will provide graphics?

What size are my graphics?

What theme if any is there?

What audience are you aiming at?

What speed should the site load at?
(Large pictures and animations slow the site down)

How often will the site need updating?

What deadlines do you have for the site to be live?

Building a website

This is in essence what you pay for - the finished product. Effective websites combine design elements of speed and style with organised, focused content to grab and hold attention. Detours Music websites use HTML, javascript, limited flash and other tools in ways to enhance presentation. They are easy to navigate and uncluttered.

In consultation with you the customer, Detours Music will build the site to your requirements, do any graphic manipulation required, advise and if necessary guide you through Domain registeration and purchase, deal with the File Transfer Protocal, Meta-Tag, and maintain the site in the future. The cost of the project will depend on the requirements of you the customer.

Hosting a Web site

In simple terms this is the provision of web space and the inclusive services necessary to support the site. You have 2 basic options, either free web space or paid for web space. Free space is all very well but, you may find yourself tied to a domain name provided by that company (usually of no practical use), you will generally find that their technical support lines are very expensive and mere navigation of their sites requires an engineering degree. In addition there is usually very limited web space, no e-mail integration, and an unreliable server.
Paid space is without doubt your best option especially when considering a site for business purposes. You will get several e-mail accounts , directly related to your domain name, e-mail auto responders, adequate web space (iro 50-100mb), CGI scripts, reliable, quick e-mail support, unlimited FTP access.
Costing of web hosting is very much refined to what is needed.

Submitting a Web site to search engines

This is the process of getting your web site listed on search engines. Building a web site is one thing - actually getting it noticed is another. The submission process itself is whereby the web site is presented to a search engine. The preparation for this is a procedure called "Meta-tagging" and "Key wording" your site.

Meta-tags are HTML tags that provide information that describes the content of your web pages. Using tags is important if you want the site to be noticed by search engines. Search engines incorporate reading meta tags as part of their indexing formulas. Whilst meta tagging is important the most important are the description and keywords tags.

Many people will and do pay money to specialist companies to specifically optimise their sites for a high ranking on a search engine.

Increase your search engine rankings

This section deals with the importance of incoming links to increase your search engine rankings. Building your website is only the first step in developing a successful online business or community. When you launch your website you will probably have very little or no traffic (visitors) to your website because they won’t know you exist. Your next job is to let people know about your website and the services or products that you offer. The best way of doing this is through increasing the number of incoming links to your website from other websites.

Incoming links

An incoming link is a link to your website from another website. Not only does it generate traffic to your website because people tend to follow links from site to site, but it also means that the more incoming links you have to your website the higher you will rank in the search engine listings.

The largest of the search engines, Google, not only looks at the amount and quality of text on each page on your website to decide where you will rank in its search engine results, but it also looks at how many incoming links to your website there are. In short, Google thinks that the more incoming links there are to a website, then the more important that website must be. Note that changes in the way Google ranks sites have made it more difficult than ever to to be high in its rankings. If someone offers to get you top place or a top five position in Google they are conning you. Tell them (politely!) that you are not interested. There is no way of guaranteeing your final position in Google unless you are willing to pay top dollar for inclusion in their own, sponsored listings. Google now employ a kind of quarantine period for new websites that has been nicknamed 'the sandbox'. This appears to be used to prevent unscrupulous web developers from producing highly optimised websites that use questionable techniques to gain high rankings. Some people were doing this knowing that the site would eventually be removed but all they were interested in was making a quick killing.

It now takes three months or more before your new site will produce any significant Google traffic meaning that this technique is no longer viable. If you must get traffic quickly you can opt to pay for inclusion using Google Adwords. With Google AdWords you can reach people when they are actively looking for your products and services. That means you receive targeted visitors and customers. Cost-per-click pricing means you only pay when people click on your ad and it is easy to control costs.

On topic links

You may be thinking that you can ask every man and his dog to link to your website and it will increase the traffic to your website and therefore your search engine rank. Unfortunately Google knows about this tactic and it is why an 'on-theme' or 'on-topic' link is valued a lot more than a link from a completely unrelated website.

For example if you are a music store selling music online, a link from a music website is an on-topic link, whereas a link from a mobile phone manufacturer is completely off-topic and is unrelated. Google can compare an on-topic link against an off-topic link and this will be reflected in your ranking in its results listing.

Non-reciprocal incoming links

A website linking to you without you linking back to them is a non-reciprocal link, and is valued more than a reciprocated link (i.e. a link exchange). Again, Google will see this as evidence of the importance of your website if people want to link to you without reciprocating the favour.

The best and most prevalent source of non-reciprocal links are from directories. Popular directories include Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project. However there are hundreds of general and industry-specific directories on the web.

Other sources of non-reciprocal links

Short of emailing other websites to request a one-way link to your site (which most webmasters will not provide) another good method of increasing the number of high-quality incoming links is to include the URL to your site whenever posting on a forum or blog. If you don’t post regularly to a forum or blog, then try and find one within your industry or community and contribute as often as you can. Not only will you be seen as an expert, but each time you post and leave your URL to your website, you are creating a one-way link to your website.

Reciprocal linking

Finally there are reciprocal links which are usually the result of a link exchange. You link to a website in return for a link back. These links do not carry as much weight as far as major search engines like Google are concerned. However, as the main objective is to increase traffic to your website, reciprocal links are great because very often users will browse though the web by following links from website to website and these links are a good method of increasing your exposure and traffic.

In addition to the above, there are facilities available from various sources such as SEO procedures, Reciprocal Links Programmes and Automated Links Facilities. They generally cost over a ton for initial set ups, and then there are monthly charges. No guarantee can be provided that the customers' webpages would then be linked at the top of Google, or that they would even receive an increase in page rank.

If you would like a quote from Detours Music, please send us an e mail to detoursmusic@detours.info with as much information as possible.

We will get back to you within 72 hours, under normal circumstances. Thank you.