Overview
TheIMEICheck is an IMEI and device-history check service for people buying and selling used phones. It answers the questions that decide a deal: was the phone reported lost or stolen, is iCloud still locked to someone else, will your SIM work in it, and is the warranty still running.
I designed and built the platform end to end: the marketing site, the client dashboard, the admin back office, the reseller API and the deployment pipeline. It launched publicly in October 2026.
The challenge
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Technical data, non-technical users. Upstream providers return raw, inconsistent replies. Buyers and shop staff need a clear yes or no in plain words.
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One catalogue, many providers. Dozens of check types come from several providers, each with its own codes, prices and reply shapes.
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Pay per result. No subscription: customers top up a wallet and pay for each check, and margins must never go negative for any customer group.
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Owner-run. The founder wanted to edit copy, images, prices and services himself.
My role
Product designer and full-stack developer. I ran the design exploration with the client, then owned everything from the database schema and provider integrations to the React components, the admin CMS and the release pipeline.
Design approach
We explored four complete art directions before locking "Daylight Counter": white and calm, one brand cyan and a single typeface across the site and both dashboards.
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Question-led copy. Each check is framed as the buyer's real question, and the IMEI is explained inline ("Dial *#06#").
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The check is the hero. A single/bulk check box sits above the fold, and a 3D phone mock types the IMEI as you do.
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Show before you charge. Every check opens a sample result with price and turnaround before payment.
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Real people, calm motion. Photography of buyers, resellers and repair benches, a scroll-stacked "five records" story and a revolving brand orbit, all with reduced-motion fallbacks.
Marketing site
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Hero check with Luhn validation as you type, single and bulk tabs
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Admin-driven "Free IMEI Check" mega menu over 47 checks in 6 groups
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Pricing catalogue with list and card views, sample dialogs and a live "your run" receipt
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A landing page per check type, with SEO fields and JSON-LD
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Five industry pages: retailers, wholesalers, repair shops, e-commerce sellers and recyclers
Client dashboard
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Wallet top-ups, invoices and a running statement
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Single and bulk checks: duplicates are flagged with "view result free" or "check again", and only chosen entries are charged
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Order history and advanced history with server-side search under every column and Excel export with one column per result field
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API settings: keys, IP allowlist, result webhooks with secret rotation
Admin back office
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Dashboard with orders, revenue, cost, profit and margin per service
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Services catalogue with pricing groups, images, SEO fields and group ordering
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Providers with credentials, balance checks and service maps; one provider entry can back several services
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Orders with retry, force-fail and refund; financial statements, invoices and a ledger
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A schema-driven CMS that edits every marketing page, including images, with reset to defaults
Engineering highlights
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Order routing. A check holds the customer's price in the wallet, routes through the service map to an upstream provider, retries or refunds on failure, and returns a normalised result to the dashboard, the export and the webhook.
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Margin guard. Margins are judged at the lowest price a customer really pays: the default price, each pricing group with customers, and any customer-specific price.
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Safe content merging. Stored CMS edits merge over code defaults, with lists replaced wholesale and a key-order-safe comparison, so later default updates are never masked.
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Clean start for production. A dry-run-first command backs up and clears test data, run only through a guarded GitHub workflow.
Stack
Laravel, Inertia.js, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS v4, shadcn/ui, GSAP, Framer Motion, MySQL, Spatie Media Library, Tiptap, Pest, GitHub Actions and DigitalOcean.
Results
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Launched October 2026 with 47 live check types from $0.01 per result
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Two dashboards and a reseller API on one codebase
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Every public page editable by the client, with no developer in the loop
Results
What this engagement left in production.
- Launched publicly in October 2026 at theimeicheck.com with 47 live check types in 6 groups
- Buyers get a plain-language answer in about a minute, from $0.01 per result, with no subscription
- Bulk checks flag typos and repeat IMEIs before anyone is charged
- Margins are guarded at the lowest price any customer actually pays, so no service runs at a loss
- The founder edits every public page, image, price and service from the admin without a developer
- Resellers integrate through a REST API with keys, IP allowlist and signed result webhooks
