Piece of Cake Junk Removal Platform

Problem

Piece of Cake Junk Removal is a junk removal company serving Toronto and the GTA. The goal was to build more than a traditional business website: a platform that connects the customer-facing experience with the company's internal business operations and centralizes customer bookings, estimates, services, availability, customer data, authentication and email communication in one system.

Approach

I designed and developed the platform from concept through deployment, working across the customer-facing website and the internal administrative system. The product has two surfaces. The public website presents the company's services and junk removal information, gives customers an online booking and estimate experience, and is responsive across desktop and mobile. The admin dashboard is where the business manages customer bookings, estimates and requests, the list of available services, business availability, and customer information, in a centralized administrative workflow.

Around those two surfaces I built custom business workflows, integrated third-party services, implemented authentication, developed administrative functionality, and created automated email communication. The goals I worked against were automation, operational efficiency, customer experience, secure administration, responsive UI/UX, and scalable business workflows.

Architecture

The platform is a TypeScript application with a customer-facing front end, an administrative dashboard, and a custom business management backend: one system that centralizes bookings, estimates, services, availability, customer data, authentication and email communication. Two external services sit beside it: Clerk for authentication and Resend for email delivery.

customer (desktop / mobile browser)          administrator
        |                                          |
        v                                          v
+--------------------------+        +----------------------------+
| customer website         |        | Clerk: administrator       |
| services info, online    |        | authentication and         |
| booking and estimate     |        | account management         |
+-----------+--------------+        +-------------+--------------+
            |                                     | role-based access
            v                                     v
+----------------------------------------+   +----------------------------+
| business management backend            |<--| admin dashboard            |
| bookings, estimates, services,         |   | bookings, estimates and    |
| availability, customer data            |   | requests, services,        |
+-------------------+--------------------+   | availability, customers,   |
                    |                        | email marketing            |
                    v                        +----------------------------+
      Resend: automated transactional emails,
      customer communication workflows,
      promotional and marketing campaigns

Customers come in through the website's booking and estimate experience. Administrators sign in through Clerk, which is integrated for authentication and account management; access to the business management features is role-based. From the dashboard they manage the bookings, estimates and requests, services, availability and customer information that the system centralizes. Resend delivers the automated transactional emails, customer communication workflows, and promotional and marketing campaigns.

The public site ships search-ready metadata (title, description, canonical URL, Open Graph and Twitter cards) and LocalBusiness structured data, and the page itself is rendered in the browser.

Technical decisions

• Clerk → administrator authentication and account management, with role-based access to the business management features.
• Resend → email delivery for the automated transactional emails, customer communication workflows, and promotional and marketing campaigns.
• Responsive design across desktop and mobile → responsive UI/UX was an explicit project goal.
• A centralized administrative system rather than a traditional business website → the goal was to connect the customer-facing experience with internal business operations so the company can manage its important workflows from one place.

Challenges

• The Reschedule and Cancel buttons on the booking confirmation opened the 404 page, because the API returns absolute links (they are reused in emails) and the app's router treated them as unknown routes, so the page now strips each link down to its path.
• A restyle of the booking calendar silently did nothing because the date-picker library renamed its styling keys in version 9, so I rewrote the calendar component for the new keys.
• Code-generated validation crashed the API server on boot for fields marked as email, so those fields stay plain strings in the API spec and are checked in the browser instead.

Results

• The platform is live at https://pieceofcakejunk.com as "Junk Removal in the GTA | Piece of Cake Junk Removal".
• The site invites visitors to book a free estimate for furniture, appliances, renovation debris and cleanouts across Toronto and the GTA, and its structured data lists five service types and eight service areas.
• The customer site's hero leads with Home, Services and Contact navigation and Book Free Estimate and Call buttons.
• The feature set covers service information and an online booking and estimate experience for customers; admin management of bookings, estimates and requests, services, availability and customer information; Clerk-backed administrator authentication; and Resend-backed transactional and marketing email.

Lessons

The project gave me hands-on experience building a real-world full-stack business platform around the operational needs of an actual company.