Most small property owners don’t have a website. They have a handful of Zillow links and a lot of copying and pasting. My mom owns and manages several properties on her own, all through different links across separate platforms. Eventually she decided that she needed a website if she was going to continue running things herself. The goal was a Framer template that closed the gap for small landlords: one site, every property in it, and no developer needed to keep it current.

I begun this project the same way I start most my morning - with a pen and paper. My creative process typically includes listing out words that are associated with the users and my main subject, then moving into sketches, and finally bringing my ideas to my design software. This was my first time using Framer instead of Figma, so the project had a minor learning curve, but now I might say that I prefer Framer over Figma for websites (I'm allowed to be controversial on my own website).

Throughout this project, I kept two users in mind: the people who land on the site looking for a place to rent, and the people who set it up, edit it, and keep it current. This means, the site itself needs to be easy to navigate for the renter, and the layers, components, assets, variables, and styles need to be organized so it is intuitive for the owner to navigate. In addition to this, I created a CMS so the users of the template can easily update their properties in one place.

Once the site was completed and launched, I faced a new challenge that I had only ever encountered before when creating my portfolio - marketing. I wish I had numbers to share about how successful my template has been since being launched on Framer Marketplace (for more than a few reasons), but I'm still in the process of successfully marketing my template. This is not without trying. But I suppose what matters most is the journey, and the fact that I found a new passion for creating websites that no one seems to want. It's a good site, and I recommend you check it out - especially if you know a small landlord who wants to be able to manage their properties all from one place. Then, maybe you could be the reason I have numbers to show for in this section.