/ Case study
Ascend Homes
Ascend came to us for Webflow developers to build its own designs. Within the year it asked us to design its investor page too.
Fri3nds project record, 2023 to 2024
Who Ascend Homes was and why it needed a Webflow team
Ascend Homes was a real estate startup with a simple promise: renting that builds wealth. Its Rent with Benefits program let families rent a professionally managed single-family home and put the money other landlords lock up as a security deposit into shares of Ascend's portfolio of homes. Co-founders Kenneth Luna and Florian Schmitz wanted a website that looked like the PropTech brands they admired, and they told us honestly that our first samples were not it. So we showed them the work our creative directors had led, and the conversation changed.
"I think these are more consistent with what we are targeting. Let's definitely move forward."
— Kenneth Luna, Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Ascend Homes
The challenge: a startup with its designs in hand and no time to wait
A few weeks into the project, Ascend's team made a call. They already had the site designed in Figma, they wanted to move fast, and what they needed was a development team that could turn those files into a working Webflow site. We agreed to reshape the engagement around that: Ascend owned the design, we owned the build, and project management kept the two in step. Kenneth and Ignacio Naveiras, who ran the day to day on Ascend's side, commented straight on the Figma file, so the build started from their own notes.
How we built Ascend's Webflow site from its own Figma files
We developed the site page by page from Ascend's Figma master file: a homepage that explained Rent with Benefits in three moves (just like a home lease, invest your deposit, build wealth as a renter), a How It Works page that walked renters from finding a home to receiving shares, an About page, a blog and the forms behind every call to action. Each round went up on staging, and Ascend's team marked it up page by page before anything moved forward. When the homepage hero and the About page needed new versions, they went through the same loop.
- About a year as Ascend's Webflow team
- 2 engagements: a development retainer, then design and build
How we designed Ascend's investor landing page
Ascend then asked for more than development. Its investment arm needed a landing page for investors in single-family rental portfolios, and this time the design was ours. We ran four design sessions and two rounds of wireframes with Ignacio before Serggio, our designer, presented the first high-fidelity mockup. Ignacio's review was clear: a good starting point, and a diagram that had to explain itself at a glance. That diagram became a Venn showing where Ascend sat between REITs and owning homes directly. Franco built the motion. To go live without downtime, we planned the switch inside Ascend's existing Webflow project, so moving the domain would not take the site offline.
- 4 design sessions and 2 wireframe rounds before high-fidelity design
What happened after launch
After the new page went live, Ignacio kept a shared maintenance board, and we worked through his requests one by one, down to keeping every item in the Venn diagram aligned. Looking back on the year, Kenneth wrote:
"...your work was great last year and we were super happy with it."
— Kenneth Luna, Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Ascend Homes
Credits
Client: Ascend Homes. Kenneth Luna (Co-CEO & Co-Founder), Florian Schmitz (Co-Founder), Ignacio Naveiras
Site design (Rent with Benefits site): Ascend Homes, in Figma
Webflow development, landing page design and maintenance: the Fri3nds team. Landing page design by Serggio Montilva, animations by Franco Beltramela, project management by Camila Ardila
Services: Webflow development, landing page design, wireframes, Webflow animations, maintenance
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