Welcome to the present day. You made it.
You just watched us meet
four briefs in a row.
You arrived on a GeoCities homepage, pressed "want something better?" three times, and travelled thirty years of web design to get here. That was the pitch. We build modern websites — and we can meet any brief, including the ridiculous ones we set ourselves.
The same services we've listed since "1996" — done properly.
Every era of this site sold the same five things, because that's the joke: good fundamentals don't change, only the wrapper does. Here's the current wrapper.
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Design & build
Websites that feel as good as they score
Strategy, design and build under one roof. Semantic HTML, fluid type, accessibility from the first wireframe, and performance budgets we actually keep. This page ships zero JavaScript and no web fonts — the aurora, the scroll reveals and the dark mode you may be enjoying are all just CSS reading your system preferences.
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E-commerce
Shops that convert
From boutique stores to heavyweight catalogues — fast checkouts, clean product data, and integrations with the tools you already run.
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Web apps
Tools your team lives in
Dashboards, portals, booking and internal systems. Built with current frameworks, not whichever one was fashionable in 2015 (we have a page about that).
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SEO
Found first
Structured data, sitemaps, Core Web Vitals, content strategy. Even our 1996 page has JSON-LD. That's commitment.
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Performance
Fast everywhere
Sub-second loads on real phones on real networks — not just on the office fibre.
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Care
Kept modern
Updates, security, monitoring and tweaks — so your site never becomes our homepage.
Relive the journey
Each era is a real page, hand-built with period-correct design crimes on top of thoroughly modern markup. They're also our portfolio: four briefs, four decades, one company.
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1996
Starfield background, marquees, a hit counter, flaming text and an "under construction" bar. Peak GeoCities. The marquee tag still works, and we refuse to apologise.
Visit 1996 → -
2005
Web 2.0: glossy pill buttons, a wet-floor logo reflection, a tag cloud, and a Beta sticker that never comes off. Now with AJAX (not really).
Visit 2005 → -
2015
Flat design: a full-bleed hero, ghost buttons, impossibly thin fonts and the phrase "delightful digital experiences", as the law required.
Visit 2015 → -
Now
This page. Container-era CSS, scroll-driven animations, automatic light/dark, fluid everything — and not one kilobyte of JavaScript.
Hire this one →
Questions we get a lot
Why does your website start in 1996?
Because every agency says "we can meet any brief", and saying it proves nothing. So we gave ourselves the silliest brief imaginable — build the same site four times, thirty years apart — and shipped it. If we can nail a GeoCities pastiche and this page, your brief is going to be fine.
Is the 1996 page really standards-compliant?
Scandalously, yes. View source: it's semantic HTML5 with structured data, a proper heading outline, alt text, reduced-motion support and a responsive layout. It just happens to be wearing a starfield and a hit counter.
What do you actually build for clients?
Marketing sites, e-commerce stores and custom web applications — plus SEO, performance work and ongoing care. Modern stack, chosen per project rather than per fashion cycle.
Will you put a marquee on my website?
Only if you ask. We will, however, think more highly of you if you do.
Your brief can't be weirder than ours.
Tell us what you need — a new site, a shop, an app, or a rescue mission for something that currently looks like our homepage. We'll reply like it's 2026, not 1996.
hello@hirethewebteam.co.ukPrefer the scenic route? Start again in 1996 and earn it.