Plain
work.

Why we exist

Hardline started from a simple frustration. Suffolk is full of excellent businesses with poor websites: engineering firms whose capability is invisible online, freight companies whose quote form asks for nothing useful, independent shops whose opening hours are wrong on half the internet. Most of these sites were not cheap. They were just built around how a theme looked rather than what customers needed.

We think a business website is a working tool. It should answer questions, filter out poor-fit enquiries, recruit people and make the phone ring. If it looks striking as well, good, but that comes second.

What we believe

• Clarity beats cleverness. Say what you do, who for, where and roughly what it costs.
• Fast is a feature. Rural broadband and coastal mobile signal are not always generous. Light pages win.
• Everyone should be able to use it. Accessibility is part of the standard build, not an extra.
• You own it. Domain, hosting, code and content belong to you.
• No invented numbers. We will not promise rankings or quote made-up percentages to win work.

How we work with you

Projects are run by the people doing the work. You will have one point of contact, a shared plan that shows what happens each week, and fixed prices agreed before work starts. Most meetings happen on video calls; where it is useful, we come to you, whether that is a unit on an industrial estate outside Stowmarket or an office on the Ipswich waterfront.

Our method

Every project follows the same order, because the order is what makes a site work:

1. Questions before pages. We find out what customers ask before they buy, usually by talking to whoever answers the phone and reading recent enquiries.
2. Plan before design. A page plan lists every page, its purpose and the search it should answer. You sign it off before anything is drawn.
3. Words before layouts. Layouts are designed around real copy, so nothing is squeezed to fit a template.
4. Phone before desktop. Every layout is designed for a small screen first.
5. Test before launch. Speed, accessibility, forms, redirects and search setup are checked on a private address before anything goes live.
6. Measure after launch. We look at search and enquiry figures at agreed points and fix what is not working.

What your first month looks like

Week	What happens	What we need from you
1	Discovery call and review of your current site	An hour of your time, and access to the site and analytics if you have them
2	Search research and a draft page plan	Comments on the plan
3	Page plan agreed; copy and first mobile layouts begin	Facts, photos and answers to our questions
4	First pages to review on a private address	Feedback from the person who makes decisions

After the first month the rest of the site follows the same pattern, page by page, until it is ready to test and launch. You can see examples in our case studies.

Tools we use

We build most brochure sites as static sites, which are fast, secure and cheap to host, and use WordPress where several people need to publish regularly. Online shops usually run on Shopify. We choose the tool for the job, explain why, and make sure you are not locked into us. See WordPress development and web design for more.

What we will not do

We do not sell long lock-in contracts, buy links, write fake reviews or build sites designed to trick search engines. We also turn work down when we are not the right fit, and we will recommend someone else when we know a better option.