The brief
APD's site was holding back a global operation: pages took over six seconds to load, layouts broke on mobile, content updates required a developer, and the information buyers needed was buried. A worldwide audience of engineers and procurement managers was leaving. They needed a site that loaded in under two seconds, worked on every device, and moved visitors to get in touch.
A site losing global buyers
APD operates across multiple regions, but their site told a different story. Pages took more than six seconds to load on a standard connection. Layouts collapsed on mobile. The product and services catalogue was hard to navigate. Procurement managers who found the site left before they found a reason to stay.
A six-second load time on a B2B site is not a UX problem, it is a revenue problem. APD's buyers are procurement managers and engineers at airlines, MRO facilities, and maintenance teams around the world. These are deliberate, informed buyers who know exactly what they are looking for. When the page takes six seconds to show them anything useful, they find a supplier whose site does not waste their time. APD was losing qualified international buyers before those buyers had seen what APD actually offered.
Mobile was a separate failure. More than 40% of B2B research now starts on a phone, even when the final purchase happens at a desk. A layout that breaks on mobile tells a global buyer that the operation behind the site is not organised. APD's operation is exceptional; their site was communicating the opposite.
Rebuilding for performance
We rebuilt the site on Next.js with static generation and edge delivery. Every page was designed around a single job: move a qualified visitor from landing to enquiry in as few steps as possible. The content model was rebuilt so the APD team can update copy, add products, and publish case references without touching code.
Static generation was the right architecture for APD's catalogue. Every product page, service description, and technical reference is pre-rendered at build time and served from the edge node closest to the visitor. There is no server to query, no database round-trip, and no cold start. A procurement manager in Singapore and one in Chicago both get the same sub-two-second experience. That is not a performance optimisation, it is a baseline requirement for a global operation.
The content model was designed for non-technical editors from the start. APD's team updates product descriptions, adds inventory categories, publishes new case references, and adjusts pricing through a structured interface that enforces consistency across every page. Changes go live without a developer involved. The site stays current between builds because the team can maintain it themselves.
Every page was structured around conversion rather than information display. Navigation is direct. Calls to action are present at every logical decision point. The enquiry form is short, prominent, and available without leaving the product context. We removed every element that added clicks without adding information relevant to a procurement decision.
The outcome
Load times dropped from 6.2 seconds to under two, a 3x improvement measured from a cold cache. The Lighthouse performance score reached 94. In the first quarter after launch, qualified inbound enquiries rose 120%. The global audience now lands on a site that matches the quality of the operation behind it.
The 120% increase in qualified enquiries came from the same global audience converting at a higher rate, not from more traffic. Buyers who previously left within seconds were now staying long enough to find what they needed and get in touch. APD now has a site that performs at the level of the operation it represents, and a content system the team controls without depending on a developer for every change.