In early 2023, Webflow announced it would bring the power of AI to Webflow. It’s February 2024, a year from the announcement, and I thought I’d see if Webflow delivered on its promise to bring AI to web design and development.
Webflow’s AI vision
Let’s first start by revisiting Webflow’s AI vision. We can split it into three areas.
1. Chatbot for Learning and Support
The first, and arguably the least significant, in my opinion, is the idea that Webflow will add a chatbot inside the designer and answer any questions you might be stuck on.
Ask, “How do I add a video embed?” and the chatbot will show you right in the Designer how you can do this. This saves users from having to leave app and Google for answers. It’s a neat feature but nothing groundbreaking, in my opinion.
2. Design Co-Pilot
The second area is much more interesting. I’d call this the design co-pilot. You tell it what you need, and it does the thing right in the Designer.
Webflow starts with basic examples, like translating text, generating ALT descriptions for images, generating SEO settings, etc. But it quickly moves to awesome stuff like generating new elements, making styling changes, generating images, or generating custom code.
In theory, you could describe to your design co-pilot what you need to add, for example, “add a list of blog posts with a picture of the author, name, and date of publication,” which will generate this for you.
Or, you could explain what custom functionality you need, and it would write the custom code for you.
As a Webflow designer, I’m very excited about this feature. It will speed up my process and minimize repetitive work.
3. AI Template Customization
The last area is probably the most groundbreaking. Webflow can customize a template to your needs based on a prompt. I think this is the one that caused the most controversy among Webflow developers. You could imagine a client buying a template, inputting a few ideas into a prompt, and walking away with a fully customized website. Who’d need a designer, right?
While this idea does look scary on paper, I think the reality will be much more in favor of designers. Most of my clients don’t have the time or the energy to learn a new tool. Even if it’s a straightforward tool, learning something new takes effort. They’d rather pay someone to do it for them. Mind you, Webflow is not a simple tool. Even with this type of AI automation, you’ll still need to understand how Webflow works to make a few changes, publish the site, etc.
Conversely, this will benefit us designers because it will allow us to build far more with far less time.
The reality in 2024 – AI Translations
As cool as all these sound, a year after Webflow’s initial AI announcement, there’s only one feature available today. As part of Webflow’s new Localization service, you can use AI to translate your website into different languages.
Bringing AI to Webflow with third-party apps
It’s not all doom and gloom for AI in Webflow. Thanks to a fantastic community, many AI-enabled apps have filled the void. They cover many of the areas mentioned in Webflow’s vision.
Webflow will release AI features in the future, and many of these apps will become obsolete, but in the meantime, you can seriously speed up your process with them.
I’ve embraced these apps, learning as much as possible and adapting my development workflow. I think this is the future of web design, and the sooner you get on board, the better your chances of staying relevant.
Here are my favorite AI-enabled apps for Webflow
Relume.ai – build websites with AI.
Relume’s AI website builder lets you input a prompt and generate a sitemap with an outline for each page. From there, it will create wireframes for each page, leveraging Relume’s vast component library. This is the closest I’ve come to having AI build a website for me in Webflow. To be clear, you still have to design the page, but thanks to Relume’s configurable style guide, getting an initial version up and running is effortless.
FluidSEO – AI-powered SEO optimization
FluidSEO is another SEO-focused Webflow app. Among many other features, it has an AI-powered page title and description generator inside Webflow.
SemFlow – AI-assisted SEO
SemFlow is a fantastic SEO app for Webflow. It will show you page-by-page how you can improve your SEO inside of Webflow. And now, it uses AI to help you generate the necessary SEO meta descriptions, page titles, etc.
AutoLink – internal link building using AI
AutoLink is a Webflow app that uses AI to analyze your content and suggests opportunities for internal linking – linking related pages across your website for improved SEO.
Alt Text Generator for Webflow
Alt Text Generator is a lightweight Chrome extension that adds a “Generate Alt Text” button to your image settings in Webflow. It’s a nifty little tool that will save you time generating alt text by analyzing the images in your media tab.
Jasper for Webflow
Jasper has a dedicated app for Webflow. It lets you rewrite text anywhere in the Designer. You can train Jasper on your brand voice and product details. You can use it to adapt your existing page to suit a different audience, etc.
Slater – AI-generated custom code for Webflow
Slater is an app that takes a different approach to custom code in Webflow. Rather than hosting and managing custom code in Webflow, scattered across multiple pages, Slater brings it all together into a scripting layer outside of Webflow. There, you can write custom code with their built-in AI assistant and deploy it via a simple script you copy-paste into the footer code of your project. I’ve built Webflow sites that relied heavily on custom code, and I can’t imagine doing it without Slater.
FlowPilot – AI custom code co-pilot for Webflow
FlowPilot will generate custom code for you based on a prompt. It’s context-aware so that you can highlight an element, and it will know what you are referencing. It uses your instance of Chat-GPT, so you have to bring your OpenAI API key.
Other AI-enabled apps for Webflow
This is a follow-up list of other AI-powered Webflow tools that didn’t make the cut into my list of favorites but might still be interesting for you.
Quilly – an automated ghostwriter for your blog
I’m mentioning Quilly here, but use it at your discretion. Quilly automatically writes and publishes a new blog post to your Webflow site on a set schedule. As someone who, maybe stupidly, still writes his blogs by typing every word, this sounds like the devil. I don’t understand the point, even if it generates a few more visits for your blog in the short term.
Text Wizard AI
Text Wizard AI is yet another AI rewrite tool. Unfortunately, it only supports rewriting and is a bit buggy.