Webflow Conf 2024 Recap: What’s New in Webflow University

Every click and scroll shapes a brand's identity today. Web design isn’t just about having an online presence anymore; it's an art that captures attention and drives engagement. If coding feels overwhelming, don’t worry—Webflow is here to help. With Webflow, you can design stunning websites without needing to write code.

However, to make the most of Webflow, you still need to learn how to use it effectively. That’s where Webflow University comes in.

Webflow University has emerged as a go-to resource for anyone eager to master web design and development, providing a wealth of free educational materials for all experience levels.

This blog dives into the latest from Webflow University, including the updates and refinements from Webflow Conf 2024. With innovative features and new tools revealed, Webflow makes it easier than ever to bring creative projects to life. 

Whether you’re starting fresh or leveling up your skills, you’ll find everything you need here to boost your learning and unlock new possibilities in web design.

Let’s unlock new possibilities for your web design journey!

Webflow Introduces the Website Experience Platform!

Webflow is a leading platform for no-code website design and development. It offers a complete SaaS solution for both building and hosting websites. With its advanced design features, Webflow has a steep learning curve, and that’s where Webflow University comes in.

Webflow University is an excellent resource for beginners and anyone curious about how Webflow works. Created by Webflow’s team, it provides webflow university courses to help you sharpen your web design and development skills. Learning from the experts ensures you can create beautiful, functional websites.

Unlike conventional web development courses, Webflow University stands out as entertaining and lively. The tutorials feature humor, ensuring they’re both enjoyable and captivating.

Redefining the website experience through design, data, AI, and collaboration, Webflow Conf 2024 has announced a big shift to bring development superpowers to everyone. This includes the launch of the first Website Experience Platform, which expands Webflow beyond building and managing sites.

To make it easier, here’s a summary of the key improvements we have rolled out.

New Features Announced at Webflow Conf 2024

Go beyond the build with Analyze and Optimize

With Webflow, you're not just building websites—you’re shaping the entire experience.  As the first Website Experience Platform, it gives new functionality that lets you extend beyond the build. 

That's where Webflow Analyze and Webflow Optimize are introduced to give full ownership of your website experience and performance. These new tools give you full control over your website’s performance, making it easier to keep improving your site long after it’s built.

Webflow Analyze

Data is your friend when you know how to use it. With Webflow Analyze, you get a clear view of how visitors interact with your site. This lets you make informed decisions to boost site performance without needing to learn complicated third-party analytics tools.

You’ll get easy-to-understand insights at the site, page, and event levels—all directly within Webflow. And the best part? Your whole team can get involved. 

Designers, content creators, and developers—people who usually don’t have access to marketing data—can now see how their work is performing. This helps everyone make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Setting it up is simple. Just one click, and event tracking is automatically enabled. No coding, no manual configuration. Just actionable data right away.

Plus, Webflow Analyze is built with privacy in mind. Since it’s native to Webflow, your data stays within our platform, avoiding third-party tools. You can easily integrate with solutions like DataGrail and Finsweet if you need advanced consent management.

Webflow Optimize

The best companies treat their websites like products—constantly refining and optimizing them to meet their visitors' needs. That’s exactly what Webflow Optimize helps you do. 

With this native A/B testing, personalization, and account-based marketing solution, you can maximize your ROI with powerful, AI-driven tools.

With Webflow Optimize, run multiple tests and track user behavior. You can also tailor experiences for each visitor. It integrates smoothly with your tools, making data transfer easy.

But the real magic is AI Optimize. This AI-powered feature learns from your visitors in real time and automatically adjusts the experience. It personalizes what visitors see based on their behavior. This makes your site seem custom-made for everyone.

You can also track how different types of visitors interact with your tests, giving you a deeper understanding of their journey. This allows you to create a truly personalized website experience for every user.

Webflow Acquires GSAP

Webflow has acquired GreenSock, the team behind GSAP—a powerful JavaScript animation library that lets you animate just about anything. This move helps bring even more interactive and engaging web experiences to life.

If you can dream it, you can create it on Webflow, and now with GSAP, you can take your animations to the next level. GSAP lets you easily animate elements, create scroll effects, and build complex animation sequences—making your site more dynamic and fun.

GSAP will still be available for everyone to use, and both Webflow and GreenSock will continue to maintain and improve the library. If you’re already using GSAP, you can keep using it just as you did before.

New Features for Building and Managing Your Sites

Every year, Webflow works to improve your experience. Feedback is collected, ideas are heard, and efforts are made to make your job easier. This year, there are Webflow new features that give you more power and flexibility to build and manage your sites.

Design Systems with Component Style Variants

Visual development is key in Webflow. Design systems help bring the power of visual development to your whole team. With new Component Style Variants, you can define multiple style options for a single component. 

This reduces the number of components designers need to maintain, making it easier for everyone to work. You'll get more flexibility with fewer components to manage. Component Style Variants will be available to all users later this year.

CMS for Powerful Content Management

To give developers more flexibility, Webflow has expanded CMS APIs to support bulk operations. This makes it easier to bring data into Webflow from third-party sources efficiently. These new CMS API features are available today.

Webflow is also improving CMS publishing. You can now draft changes to CMS items without worrying about accidental publishing. Plus, you'll be able to publish individual CMS items to all domains, without needing to publish the entire site. These updates will be available later this year.

Additionally, Webflow will launch CMS nesting in beta later this year, continuing to make it easier to design with CMS data at scale.

Localization

Localization helps you customize your site for a global audience. Since its launch last year, it’s been widely adopted. However, feedback showed that some of you needed more access to key localization features.

Starting today, localized styles will be available for all Localization plans. For users on the Advanced plan, the locale limit increases from 5 to 10. 

These updates aim to give you the tools to create the best experiences for users worldwide and improve conversions, no matter their location or language.

Streamlined Forms for Easy User Interactions

Forms are essential for collecting leads, and feedback, building email lists, and more. To help you manage forms more efficiently, Webflow has introduced some key updates.

The new Bot Prevention feature helps prevent unwanted form submissions while keeping data private. 

Plus, the updated Form Settings view brings form connections and submission notifications together in one place. Now, you won’t have to switch between the Designer and Dashboard to manage your forms.

These form updates are available to all customers now, and more improvements are on the way.

A New AI Assistant To Supercharge Your Workflows 

The Webflow team has dedicated a lot of time to figuring out how you can use AI to help you and your teams work faster. This way, you can focus more on the creative aspects of your projects that truly benefit from human input. 

The new AI Assistant was announced at Webflow Conf 2024. It's the first two powerful skills built right into Webflow. This means you can get all the support and ideas you need exactly when you need them.

AI Design

Designing your site can take time, but with Webflow AI Assistant, you can speed up the process. The Assistant helps you create new page sections using your existing design system and the context of your site. You can quickly generate common sections like pricing, features, testimonials, and more.

Once the Assistant generates a preview, you can easily customize it to match your brand. Adjust backgrounds and colors, and even tweak the copy to get it just right. With AI Assistant, you can launch campaigns faster while still keeping full control over your content.

Right now, the AI design feature is in limited beta, starting with select templates, and it will be available for more sites later this year. You can learn more about how it works here.

*Note: While in beta, generating sections with the AI Assistant is available to all users, regardless of plan. Once fully available, this feature may become a paid option.

Writing AI

The AI Assistant doesn’t just help with design. It also helps marketers quickly create relevant content inside Webflow. Building on our recent bulk CMS item generation, the Assistant now helps you generate full CMS items with contextually relevant content. 

It understands your content fields and recent items in your CMS collection, so even the first draft matches your brand’s tone of voice.

This feature is perfect for content marketers who need to create articles fast or designers looking to jumpstart pages with realistic content. The AI Assistant can help you get the first draft done quickly, giving you more time to focus on strategic work.

With the launch of the AI Assistant, Webflow reassures users that data privacy is a top priority. They clarify that their AI models don’t use user data for training. If their policy changes in the future, they’ll be transparent and give you the choice to opt in rather than automatically opting out.

Capabilities for Team Collaboration 

Building and managing a website is a team effort. To make collaboration easier in Webflow, new features are being introduced. These include page building, design approvals, and improved navigation.

Page building lets marketers, clients, and non-technical team members easily create landing pages with drag-and-drop blocks. Designers keep control over the design system, while others can independently create brand-approved pages. 

Now, it's available on all plans. You can assign the new Marketer role to teammates or clients for access.

Design approvals make it easier to ensure changes to the site are reviewed by the right people. The new review experience lets you designate required or optional reviewers. This feature is available for Webflow Enterprise customers and their partners.

The updated navigation improves collaboration by allowing easy switching between Designer, CMS, Analyze and Optimize, and Preview. You can see who is working with you on the same page in real time, drop comments, or even publish your site while collaborating with your team. This new navigation will be available to all customers later this year.

Updates to Grow the Webflow Community

Webflow cares about its community. So, at the Webflow Conference 2024, they announced several initiatives. These included a Webflow University update and a new Help Center for docs.

For those contributing to the Template Marketplace, there are updates to help understand demand and trends. New ways to improve discoverability are also being added, like relaxing the exclusivity rule for template designs. You can now distribute your designs across multiple marketplaces.

Agencies and freelancers using Webflow will gain from updates to the Certified Partner Program. This includes a new feature, Client Payments. It allows you to request payment details from clients for hosting and other costs during site-building. Soon, you’ll also be able to charge ongoing fees for services. 

Moreover, you can transfer sites to clients’ workspaces without disrupting their subscriptions.

Key Takeaway

Webflow’s latest updates and resources at Webflow University are designed to empower every aspect of your web experience. 

With features that refine design, collaboration, analysis, and even AI content generation, Webflow is continuously unlocking new possibilities for users. Webflow University is a valuable hub for learners at any stage. Accessible the best Webflow university courses and tutorials guide you through each feature.

Whether you’re just starting or looking to expand your expertise, Webflow University has something for everyone. Best of all, it’s entirely free, making it the perfect place to sharpen your Webflow skills and knowledge. 

Dive in, explore, and boost your web design journey!