How We Built a Solar Company's Website, Quoting System and Marketplace

The starting point: a long site and an empty marketplace

Töz Solar's site was very long; the main action, asking for a site visit or a quote, only came after the fifth screen. It had a dark, cinematic design, and the admin panel had no place to prepare quotes. The site's strongest part was a pre-analysis tool that works out system size from an electricity bill, and we had to keep it.

GES Store was a marketplace opened for solar products, but its shop window was empty. Asking for a quote meant signing up first, and the old listing page showed the buyer's phone number to everyone.

The site-visit request on the first screen

We rewrote Töz Solar's front end from scratch and moved the colours from a dark theme to bright daylight. We put a live calculator bar in the hero: as visitors type their monthly bill, the system size, panel count and roof area appear.

We split the site-visit form into three steps, with only the service, name and phone required. On phones, Call, WhatsApp and Free visit buttons sit at the bottom of the screen. Our website for solar companies page explains what a solar website should include.

Quotes are prepared in the panel and approved from a link

When the company prepares a quote in the panel, it picks products from its own shop on GES Store; the name, price and image come along automatically. Service lines such as installation are added by hand. The system size is worked out from the panels' power, and a yearly production estimate for the customer's province comes from PVGIS data; both are written into the quote.

The quote becomes a PDF in the same style as the site's pre-analysis report and goes to the customer with a private link that cannot be guessed. The customer opens the quote on their phone and approves it by typing their name; the approval reaches the panel and the company's email. An expired quote can no longer be approved and is marked in the panel.

First job in the marketplace: products and current prices

When the company became a dealer of a distributor, we imported that distributor's priced products into GES Store: 413 products with their technical data, stock codes and 920 photos. We deliberately left out products listed without a price.

Since the distributor's prices are tied to foreign currency, the prices on the site are recalculated with the exchange rate every business day. If the company changes a price by hand, that product is left out of the rate update, so a manual price is never overwritten.

Requests without signing up

A quote request takes five steps and a consulting request three, and neither needs an account. In the last step visitors enter their name, phone and email; the account is created after the request is sent and a password link goes out by email. Someone who already has an account types their password and the request is linked to it.

The buyer's phone number is visible only to approved companies that send them an offer. The forms have hidden trap fields and a sending limit against bots.

Keeping visitors on track: the entry screen and search

On GES Store's entry screen, visitors pick one of four paths: the store, a request, second-hand or consulting. Those who enter the store continue with categories, and those looking for a product continue with search.

Search works word by word; "450 w" and "450W" give the same result, and categories, products and companies are suggested while typing. Product pages show a technical data table and a price comparison with products of similar power; for panels, the comparison uses the price per watt.

Companies add and edit products, post listings and send offers on open requests from their own panel. There is also a second-hand market that works with approved listings.

Two sites, one business

Töz Solar and GES Store are separate sites but parts of the same business: the corporate site collects site-visit requests, the quoting system turns them into prices, and the marketplace sells the products and supplies them to quotes. We keep developing both; the details are on the Töz Solar and GES Store case pages.

If you are planning a similar site or quoting system for your company, see our website design page or write to us. A corporate site starts at $200.