The work, with receipts.Baselines, timeframes, sources.

Full engagement

+43.5%

Qualified leads a month, across the full engagement

2022 – 2025 · client CRM

1,840 to 2,640 qualified leads a month. The full-stack rebuild behind it.

Northern Hydraulics is an industrial hydraulics distributor — ~8,500 SKUs of JIC/NPT fittings, adapters, and assemblies sold to engineers and MRO buyers. Over a three-year relationship (2022–2025) we ran the whole growth function: brand and design, a Magento 1 to headless replatform, AI-search and technical SEO, an AI-assisted catalog rewrite, pillar content, paid ads, and cold outbound. Qualified leads went from 1,840 to 2,640 a month, up 43.5%.

8,500

SKUs replatformed off Magento 1

6 months · schema-complete from day one

8,500 SKUs off Magento 1, onto a storefront AI can read.

Northern Hydraulics ran an 8,500-SKU catalog on Magento 1, which hit end-of-life with no security patches and product markup AI search engines couldn't parse. Over 6 months we replatformed the whole catalog to a headless Next.js storefront on Shopify Hydrogen, schema-complete from day one, and carried the JIC/NPT spec quote flow across intact. Mobile category-browse INP dropped from 600ms+ to under 200ms. This was the web-dev cut of the full engagement; the qualified-lead growth is reported on the anchor study.

×8.5

AI-Overview citations, top 50 commercial queries

4 → 34 · 6-month engagement

4 to 34 AI-Overview citations on the top 50 commercial queries.

Northern Hydraulics is an industrial hydraulics distributor with ~8,500 SKUs. On the top 50 commercial queries, AI Overviews were citing its manufacturers, not its own pages, so it sat in AI answers exactly 4 times. Six months of product-schema and answer-shaped page work took that to 34 AIO citations (×8.5), making the distributor the citable source instead of its suppliers.

×2

Organic sessions from informational & pillar pages

6-month pillar-and-cluster build

Pillar content that out-writes the manufacturers. Informational sessions, doubled.

Editorial cut of the Northern Hydraulics engagement (2022–2025). Over six months, senior subject-matter pillar-and-cluster content on the core fitting categories roughly doubled organic sessions from informational and pillar pages, and pushed Northern's pillars to the top of AI-Overview answers for six category terms the manufacturers used to own. This was one discipline inside the full engagement; the qualified-lead growth is reported on the anchor study.

12%

Reply rate, cold outbound to a built distributor list

8-week run · engineered sender reputation

A 12% reply rate to a cold distributor list. Deliverability, engineered first.

Cold outbound email to a built list of hydraulics distributors and OEM buyers, run over 8 weeks as one part of the full Northern Hydraulics engagement. Deliverability came first: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up, sending domains warmed, then a tight 5-touch sequence to a researched list. The list returned a 12% reply rate.

×8.5

AI Overview citation count, top 50 commercial queries

4 → 34 citations · 6-month engagement

4 to 34 AI Overview citations in six months. One Standard retainer.

A mid-market automation distributor with ~12K SKUs was ranking well and still bleeding organic share, because AI Overviews were eating the click-through on informational queries. Six months on the Standard editorial retainer took its AI Overview citations on the top 50 commercial queries from 4 to 34. Organic leads from informational pages doubled.

8,500

SKUs replatformed in six months

Magento 1 → Next.js + Shopify Hydrogen

8,500 SKUs off Magento 1, onto a storefront AI engines can read.

The same hydraulics distributor’s commerce stack was at end-of-life. Magento 1, schema AI Overviews couldn’t read, and 600ms-plus INP that was killing add-to-cart on mobile category browsing. A six-month replatform moved all 8,500 SKUs onto a headless Next.js + Shopify Hydrogen storefront, with a complete schema graph live on the first deploy.

12 wk

Time to first AI Overview citation, post-launch

Greenfield build · zero pre-launch organic history

Cited in AI Overviews 12 weeks after launch. On a domain with zero history.

A fluid power manufacturer opening a direct commerce channel had no storefront, no organic history, and one hard rule: the Acumatica PIM stays the source of truth. Five months later a 22k-SKU Next.js + Saleor build was live. It shipped AIO-ready, and earned its first AI Overview citations within 12 weeks of launch.

0.31 → 0.02

Cumulative Layout Shift on product pages, at launch

Shopify Plus B2B · 10-week migration

CLS 0.31 to 0.02 at launch, and 61 plugins down to 4.

A specialty fasteners distributor with 12k SKUs across 17 brands ran B2B commerce on WooCommerce and 61 plugins. Three of them handled net terms and tiered pricing, and broke on every update. A ten-week migration to Shopify Plus B2B swapped the plugin stack for native primitives and took product-page CLS from 0.31 to 0.02.