Goodwill goes a long way: How building trust with our community fueled our viral GSAP relaunch

Webflow's reintroduction as a Website Experience Platform (WXP) at the 2024 Webflow Conf, along with the announcement of acquiring GSAP, marked a significant milestone in web development, emphasizing creativity and bespoke animation. By making GSAP, a leading JavaScript animation library, free for the entire web community, Webflow aimed to eliminate barriers to creativity and foster a vibrant community of developers. This strategic move not only generated substantial marketing momentum, with viral posts and a 27.5% engagement rate, but also expanded Webflow's creative developer base, evidenced by a notable increase in GSAP adoption. The initiative showcased Webflow's commitment to long-term investments in "pro-code" tools and building trust within the GSAP community, with the company administering refunds to recent GSAP purchasers as a goodwill gesture. The launch's success was further amplified by coordinated product rollouts, such as the ability to preview custom code on Webflow sites and improvements to GSAP plugins, leading to record-breaking engagement and setting the stage for future innovations in web interaction solutions.