Filterway — Elevating Water, Air, and Oil Filtration for a Cleaner Future

We led the project end-to-end across four phases, with no client-side dev team — every line from architecture to launch was on us.

Phase 1 — Discovery & Design (2023, early months)

Before touching the platform, we mapped the work. The Magento 2.3 → 2.4.5 upgrade alone was a major technical lift — major version jumps in Magento mean PHP version compatibility, MySQL/MariaDB requirements, third-party module compatibility, and theme architecture changes all stacked together. We audited the existing store top to bottom: every extension, every customization, every cron job.

In parallel, the design phase rebuilt the storefront identity around how filtration buyers actually shop:

• Category architecture across four verticals (water, air, oil filtration, pool & spa) with buyer-journey-aware navigation

• Product page layout designed for both informed buyers (technical specs front) and learning buyers (compatibility guidance, use-case content)

• Mobile-first navigation patterns tuned for one-handed research and quick re-orders

• Consultation/contact patterns surfaced naturally for higher-consideration purchases

The Luma theme was retained as the base — the customization scope was deep enough that a custom theme on top of Luma made more long-term sense than a third-party theme dependency.

Phase 2 — Platform Upgrade (2023, mid-project)

The Magento 2.3 → 2.4.5 upgrade went in next. This wasn't a single command — it was a structured upgrade path with full module compatibility work, PHP migration, and database compatibility checks at each step.

Core technical decisions in this phase:

• OpenSearch replacing Elasticsearch — modern, supported, and the future-proof choice on 2.4.5+

• Custom checkout rebuilt for the new Magento version, optimized for the mobile conversion problem identified during discovery

• Theme migration — custom Luma-based theme rebuilt for 2.4.6 compatibility with the new design

• Third-party module audit and replacement where modules weren't 2.4.6-compatible

• Full data preservation through the upgrade — products, customers, orders, and configuration intact

The upgrade was tested through multiple staging cycles before any production cutover.

Phase 3 — Custom Modules & Integrations (2023, late)

With the platform stable on 2.4.6, we built the modules that turned Filterway from "another Magento store" into a platform tuned for filtration commerce.

Subscription module for recurring filter purchases. Most of Filterway's catalog is consumable — filters get replaced on schedule, regardless of season. We built a custom subscription system that lets customers set their own replacement cadence (monthly, quarterly, semi-annual) per product, with automatic billing through the existing payment gateways. This turned a high-volume one-off transaction pattern into predictable recurring revenue.

ShipStation integration. A custom Magento 2 module pushes order data to ShipStation, where Filterway's fulfillment team handles label printing, multi-warehouse routing, and tracking back to the customer. The integration handles every order type — single-purchase, subscription renewal, and B2B bulk orders.

Custom checkout. Built to address the mobile conversion problem, with short-form fields, persistent cart state, and payment method selection optimized for U.S. and Canadian buyers.

Internal analytics tools. Custom admin dashboards for the Filterway team — order velocity, subscription health, product-level performance, and customer cohort analysis. The team needs to see what's happening in their store without exporting to a third-party BI tool.

Payment integrations. Stripe and PayPal as primary gateways, both supporting subscription billing.

Marketing stack integrations. Mailchimp and Klaviyo connected for transactional and lifecycle email — abandoned cart, post-purchase, subscription milestones.

Phase 4 — Launch, Hosting Scale-Up & Ongoing (2024 — Present)

The redesigned, upgraded store launched on Digital Ocean with full performance work:

• OpenSearch powering catalog search and faceted filtering

• Varnish Full Page Cache for high-traffic category and product pages

• Redis for session and cache backends

• Cloudflare CDN for global asset delivery (important for the Canadian customer base)

• WebP image conversion + lazy loading across product galleries

• Critical CSS extracted and inlined for above-the-fold rendering

• JS/CSS bundling strategy tuned for the new theme

As traffic grew, we migrated the infrastructure from Digital Ocean to a Dedicated Server for better performance under sustained load — a step most Magento stores eventually need but few plan for in advance.

Bilingual setup (English + French) with hreflang covers the U.S. and Canadian markets cleanly.

The work continues. Filterway is an active partnership — feature additions, performance reviews, subscription system refinements, and the ongoing infrastructure work that keeps a real eCommerce store healthy.