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Jul 12, 2025
How I built my Framer template empire
It started as a weekend experiment - a single landing page template I built for fun. Now, it’s a growing collection of design tools powering thousands of creators, startups, and indie makers. This is the story of how I turned a Framer obsession into a thriving digital product business.
I live in a converted Victorian house that looks like one large home — but it’s actually split into multiple flats. Only one flat (mine, 6A) uses the main front door. The rest (Flats B, C & 1–5) enter from a side entrance that isn’t obvious at all. The problem? Delivery drivers constantly ring my bell — sometimes dozens of times a day. Working from home means constant distractions. The signs the landlord put up? Poorly designed, easily missed, and ignored.
It’s a familiar UX problem: minimal scope, high impact, and an MVP solution that literally needs to be on the door tomorrow.
Key observations:
- Behavior: fast scanning, limited English, rushing
- Flaws: misleading facade, bad navigation, unclear signposting
- Goal: stop the ringing and guide the right people
- Desire: a visually clean solution that suits the building
The quick fix? Cut the wire. The postman knows the address. Delivery apps notify you. In UX, this is removing the affordance — eliminating the option to take the wrong action. It’s a hard constraint. Effective, but not flexible. Instead, like most UX challenges, I leaned into a design-led approach — even if part of me still wanted to cut the wire.
To the drawing board:
- Mockups with different tones, icons, and layout
- Edge cases: block or guide?
- Minimal copy — because people scan
- Clear contrast between “don’t ring” and “go this way”
- Trade-off: stop misrings vs. help misplaced deliveries
Then came the internal voice: “Stop right there.” That voice comes with experience. In UX — like in life — we rarely get the perfect process. You hit real constraints: time, energy, budget. In my case, it meant less time with family. That’s my real currency.
And what about metrics? I didn’t track the number of rings before starting — just acted on a growing sense of frustration. That’s how many teams work too: designing alternatives based on instinct or noisy feedback, without always measuring the core problem. Even with data, we often don’t deconstruct. We let old KPIs and edge cases drive design. But in reality, the goal is simple: solve the core user need — nothing more. So the final message? “Do Not Ring. This Bell Is for Flat 6A Only.” Direct. Bold. Clear. It may not follow a perfect UX flow, but it solves the real-world problem at the exact moment it matters. Inverted pyramid, keeps cognitive load low, and prevents error — especially for users rushing, scanning, or with limited English.
Your design doesn’t always need to be perfect. It doesn’t always need data behind it — especially when counterarguments are outside the original goal. Sometimes, it just needs to work — for the right people, at the right time.
