E-commerce · Solar industry retail
A custom commerce build, a custom payment plugin, and SEO under one roof.
3
Engineering disciplines: build, custom plugin, ongoing SEO
1
Team across the full commerce stack
2016
Active engagement since (continuous since launch)
Clutch
Verified review live on the OST Clutch profile
About the client
A solar installation contractor and product retailer.
Fire Mountain Solar is a solar installation contractor that also sells solar products through e-commerce throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Canada. The team is small, with no dedicated website person, but they ship product across borders and operate in a regulated category that requires informed buyers and clear technical documentation.
The e-commerce arm of the business needed to work properly: products discoverable, cart functional, and payment processing reliable for an industry where product mix changes seasonally and shipping logistics matter.
Solar industry retail. Multi-region shipping. Specialty product category.
Outdated platform plus a custom payment integration plus invisible search presence.
The requirement
A previous developer fell short. The cart needed engineering.
Fire Mountain Solar engaged another company to develop a shopping cart on the OpenCart platform. That team could not adequately service the operational needs once the cart was live. Maintenance lapsed. Bugs accumulated. A new partner was needed.
Two specific issues compounded the situation. Their credit card processing company did not have an off-the-shelf plugin for OpenCart. A custom payment integration would be required. And the cart's OpenCart version was extremely outdated, which complicated any feature work.
On top of the commerce work, their organic search visibility was nearly nonexistent. Without a dedicated website person, they had no SEO capacity in-house.
The solution
Detailed proposal. Iterated build. Three disciplines under one team.
OST put together a highly detailed proposal that clearly outlined what we would need from Fire Mountain Solar, what we would do, and how long it would take. Transparency upfront paid off in trust. We iterated on the site together with the client team, testing each piece and making notes on what to improve before moving forward.
The work split into three engineering disciplines, all run by one team. The same engineers worked across the cart, the payment plugin, and the SEO engagement, so context never got lost across handoffs.
A featured deliverable
Custom payment plugin engineered to fit
The credit card processor had no plugin for the OpenCart version Fire Mountain Solar was running. Most agencies would push the client to switch processors. Instead, we engineered a custom plugin tuned to their existing processor, their approval flow, and the specific reconciliation requirements solar industry transactions carry.
The plugin shipped, integrated cleanly with the cart, and removed the dependency on processor-side plugin support. One less external dependency, one more piece of the platform that the OST team owns end-to-end.
Why one team across all three
Cart, payment, and SEO under one engineering organization.
- Single source of context across cart, plugin, and SEO
- Same engineers across releases, so debugging is fast
- SEO informs feature work instead of fighting it
- Custom payment matches the specific reconciliation flow
- Predictable monthly billing across all three disciplines
- One contract, one owner for procurement
- Multi-region shipping handled once, not three times
- No "that's the other vendor's problem" handoffs
Ongoing partnership
Continuous engagement since August 2016.
Fire Mountain Solar has been a Fire Mountain Solar engagement for nearly a decade. Same team, same accountability, across multiple platform refreshes and SEO cycles. Their Clutch review, posted in 2018 and still publicly accessible, captured a 4.5-star experience. The relationship has continued since.
When their card processor changes, their cart needs new features, or their SEO competition shifts, Fire Mountain Solar talks to one team. One contract, one source of truth, three engineering disciplines. That's the model.
Building or scaling a complex e-commerce platform?
Custom commerce, custom payment plugins, ongoing SEO. We do all three under one team and one contract. The handoff problem disappears.