What's new at Webflow Conf 2024 - Full list with features

Webflow Conf 2024 has been an exciting event for developers and designers alike, showing a host of new tools and features that are set to redefine how websites are built and optimized on the platform. Whether you’re attending the event in person in San Francisco or tuning in online, there’s no shortage of innovation to explore. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through all the key updates, explain what they mean for your Webflow projects, and share how they’ll help streamline your workflow.

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A New Navigation Experience

Starting with one of the most visible updates, Webflow has introduced a new navigation panel that completely transforms how you work within the platform. The tab-based interface allows for faster switching between different tools—such as the Designer, CMS, Analyze, and Optimize—without having to leave the page you're on. Collaboration is also improved, with real-time updates showing who else is working on the same page, and even the ability to drop comments. This update boosts productivity and makes teamwork within Webflow more seamless than ever.

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Page Building for Everyone

Webflow's new Page Building feature is designed to empower marketers, clients, and less-technical teammates to build and edit pages independently—without compromising design integrity. This feature allows designers to set up design system guardrails, ensuring that any new page created by non-technical users stays consistent with the brand’s visual and functional standards. As a result, teams can execute campaigns, product releases, and experiments with greater speed and confidence.

For designers and developers, Page Building offers the ability to create static page templates and components that can be used by other team members. Designers can also establish page slots, acting as placeholders for pre-approved components, so that marketing teammates can safely add or modify content. All pages built from these static templates inherit the SEO settings, custom code, and other configurations set by the designer, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints. This allows designers to maintain full control over the look and feel of the site while giving others the flexibility to build and iterate quickly.

Marketers, on the other hand, can enjoy a drag-and-drop experience to create landing pages, feature pages, or event pages, all using designer-approved building blocks. With no risk of breaking the site, they can edit content, customize page components, and even request approvals before publishing. This allows for more agile and efficient collaboration, reducing bottlenecks and making the process of creating new pages faster than ever.

Whether you’re launching a new product, creating a campaign landing page, or adjusting content for a live event, Page Building enables your entire team to contribute without deviating from the established design system, ensuring that your brand remains consistent across all channels.

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Component Style Variants

Design systems just got a major boost with the introduction of Component Style Variants. This feature allows designers to create multiple styles for a single component, drastically reducing the number of components needed. Now, instead of duplicating components to account for every possible design variation, you can consolidate them into a single, flexible component with different style options. This not only saves time but also keeps your design systems clean and manageable.

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Streamlined Approval Workflows

Collaboration doesn’t stop at creating and editing; ensuring that the right people approve changes is just as important. With the new Design Approvals feature, Webflow allows you to designate required versus optional reviewers, ensuring that no changes go live without the proper sign-offs. This update gives teams more visibility and control over the design process, making it ideal for larger projects where multiple stakeholders are involved.

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Draft Changes and Single Item Publish

One of the most highly anticipated features of Webflow Conf 2024 is the Draft Changes and Single Item Publish functionality. This allows you to make changes to CMS items and save them as drafts without immediately publishing them to the live site. Even better, you can publish individual CMS items rather than having to republish the entire site. This gives developers and content managers much more control over the publishing process, reducing the risk of unintended changes going live.

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Expanded CMS API Capabilities

Webflow has introduced significant enhancements to its CMS API capabilities, giving developers more power to manage large-scale content efficiently. The newly expanded API now supports bulk operations, allowing you to create, read, update, or delete up to 100 items in a single API request. This is a game-changer for developers who need to connect Webflow to third-party data sources like CDPs (Customer Data Platforms) or PIMs (Product Information Management systems), as well as those migrating content from legacy platforms.

These updates drastically improve the efficiency of API operations, reducing the number of requests required to manage large volumes of content, which in turn helps minimize rate limitations and cuts down on API rate inflation. Whether you're syncing thousands of product listings or updating a vast content library, these new endpoints will make bulk operations faster and more reliable.

To help you get started with these capabilities, Webflow provides comprehensive developer documentation and an in-depth guide with step-by-step instructions on how to leverage the CMS APIs to their fullest potential. These resources will enable developers to take full advantage of Webflow’s API capabilities for large-scale projects with greater ease and flexibility.

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Localization Updates

Reaching a global audience has become easier with Webflow’s latest Localization Updates. The update increases the locale limit from 5 to 10 for Advanced plan users, making it easier to manage multi-language websites. Moreover, localized styles are now available for all Localization plans, ensuring that your global audience gets a consistent experience that’s adapted to their local preferences. This is perfect for brands looking to extend their reach across borders.

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Meet the AI Assistant

Webflow is embracing AI in a big way with the launch of its new AI Assistant. This tool is designed to speed up your workflow by helping generate page sections based on your existing design system and context. Whether you need a pricing table, a testimonial section, or a feature block, the AI Assistant can quickly generate these sections, allowing you to focus on more creative work. It’s also a boon for content creators and marketers, as the AI can create contextually relevant content within the CMS, helping teams bring campaigns to life faster than ever before.

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Webflow Analyze

Understanding how users interact with your website is crucial for optimizing performance, and that’s where Webflow Analyze comes in. This new tool gives you an in-depth look at visitor behavior, page performance, and click events, all within the Webflow interface. No need for third-party analytics tools—Analyze puts everything in one place, making it easier for teams to make data-driven decisions. Best of all, it only takes one click to set up, with no manual configuration required.

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Webflow Optimize

Taking things a step further, Webflow has introduced Webflow Optimize, which allows you to run A/B tests, personalize user experiences, and dynamically adjust content based on real-time user behavior. Powered by AI, Optimize learns from your visitors in real time, automatically adjusting which experiences are shown to whom. This feature is particularly valuable for marketers looking to maximize ROI from their websites by delivering highly personalized experiences.

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GSAP Joins the Webflow Family

One of the standout announcements from Webflow Conf 2024 is the acquisition of GSAP (GreenSock Animation Platform), a leading JavaScript library for web animations. This move significantly boosts Webflow's native animation capabilities, allowing users to create more dynamic, interactive websites with ease. Known for powering over 12 million websites, GSAP has long been a favorite among web developers for its flexibility and rich feature set.

With this acquisition, GSAP will continue to be available to everyone, not just Webflow users, ensuring the wider web community can still access its powerful animation tools. Webflow is also honoring all current GSAP pricing plans and licenses, so existing users can continue without disruption.

What makes this partnership particularly exciting is the shared mission of both companies—bringing development superpowers to everyone. While Webflow focuses on intuitive design and development interfaces, GSAP empowers creators to bring complex animations to life. Together, they’re expected to introduce even more user-friendly animation tools, with a potential GSAP GUI in the works, making animations more accessible to all skill levels.

In short, this partnership brings the best of both worlds, unlocking new creative possibilities for animators and developers alike.

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New Marketplace and Client Features

For freelancers and agencies, Webflow has rolled out some critical updates that make managing client projects easier. Client Payments now allow you to request payment details from clients to cover hosting and additional services while the site is being built. Additionally, Seamless Transfers ensure that you can transfer sites to client workspaces without disrupting their existing subscriptions. For agencies offering ongoing services, the newly announced Project Fees feature, launching early next year, will enable you to charge recurring fees for services directly through Webflow.

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Forms Get an Upgrade

Forms are an essential part of any website, and Webflow has made them even more powerful with Form Updates. The updates include a new Bot Prevention feature, which runs in the background to filter out spam submissions. Plus, the new form settings panel consolidates all your form connections and notifications in one place, streamlining form management and reducing the need to switch between multiple dashboards.

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Summary

Webflow Conf 2024 has delivered a wealth of updates that will change how we approach web development and design. From AI-driven innovations like the AI Assistant and Webflow Optimize to practical features like Component Style Variants and Draft Changes, these tools will empower developers, designers, and marketers to work faster and smarter.

As a Webflow Certified Partner Agency, Codelevate is excited to help you integrate these features into your projects. Whether you’re looking to streamline your workflow or elevate your site’s design and functionality, we’re here to support you. Schedule a free call to discover how we can bring the best of Webflow to your business.

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