Set up audiences - Webflow University Courses

Set up audiences

Learn how to define groups of visitors you can use in your optimizations.

Audiences in Optimize

Not every visitor comes to your site with the same needs or intent.

Someone arriving from a paid campaign may be interested in a particular product. A returning customer may be ready for a different next step. A visitor from a large company may care about different benefits than someone from a small business.

An audience is a subset of your site visitors that matches criteria you define. You can use audiences to include or exclude groups of visitors so an optimization reaches the people it’s relevant to. For example, you might define audiences for:

Mobile visitors
Returning visitors
Visitors from a specific campaign
Visitors from enterprise companies
Existing customers

[IMAGE: All site visitors → filters like Mobile, Campaign, Company, Customer → matching audiences.]

Once you create an audience, you can reuse it across optimizations.

How audiences work in optimizations

Audiences play different roles depending on the kind of optimization you’re running.

Traditional Test and AI Optimize use audiences the same way: to define who can enter the optimization. Manual personalization uses audiences to decide which experience each visitor sees.

Traditional Test

Audience = who can participate

Use an audience to limit the test to a specific group of visitors.

Example: Test a higher homepage CTA only with mobile visitors.

[IMAGE: All visitors → Mobile visitors → Base + Variation A]

Eligible visitors enter the test, then traffic is split across the variations.

AI Optimize

Audience = who can participate

AI Optimize uses audiences the same way as a traditional test: the audience defines who is eligible for the optimization.

Example: Run several headline variations only for paid campaign visitors, then let AI decide which variation each eligible visitor sees.

[IMAGE: All visitors → Paid campaign visitors → AI Optimize → Headline A / B / C]

The audience controls eligibility. AI Optimize controls variation delivery.

Manual Personalization

Audience = who sees what

In a manual personalization, audiences are assigned to individual variations.

Example: Show enterprise visitors enterprise-focused messaging and small-business visitors small-business messaging.

[IMAGE: Enterprise audience → Enterprise variation; SMB audience → SMB variation. SOMETHING LIKE THIS]

Here, the audience directly determines which experience a visitor receives.

Best practice: Plan for audience overlap

In a manual personalization, a visitor may qualify for more than one audience. For example, someone might be both an Existing customer and part of an Enterprise company.

When that happens, audience priority determines which experience they receive. Put the more specific or important audience higher in the priority order.

[IMAGE: Existing customers + Enterprise companies → overlapping visitor → higher-priority variation shown.]

Choose how to define your audience

Most audiences in Optimize are rules-based. You define one or more conditions, and visitors who match those conditions become part of the audience.

[IMAGE: Audience builder showing Signal → Condition → Value → Matching audience.]

The rules you can use come from several kinds of visitor data:

Built-in visitor signals

Optimize can use information it already knows about a visitor, such as:

Device — like desktop, tablet, or mobile
Location — where a visitor is browsing from
Referral source — where they came from
Previous activity — like new vs. returning

These are often enough for straightforward audiences like Returning mobile visitors.

Campaign and URL data

URL parameters let you build audiences using information included in a visitor’s URL.

For example: utm_campaign = enterprise-launch

You could use that signal to create an audience of visitors arriving from a specific ad, email, or campaign.

CRM and marketing data

Connected tools can make lead, customer, or account information available for audience rules.

For example, you might define audiences for:

Existing customers
Qualified leads
Target accounts
Visitors at a particular lifecycle stage

This lets you tailor an experience using information your team already knows about the visitor or account.

Company data from Enhanced Match

Enhanced Match can give you company-level signals for some otherwise anonymous visitors, such as:

Industry
Company size
Company domain
Estimated revenue

For example, you could combine industry and company size to define an audience of Large healthcare companies.

Custom attributes

Custom attributes let your team pass additional visitor information into Optimize when the built-in signals don’t cover what you need.

For example: customer_tier = enterprise

You could then use that attribute to define an Enterprise customers audience.

Note: Custom attributes typically require developer support.

Code-based audiences

For advanced cases that rules can’t express, you can build a code-based audience using custom JavaScript.

The code evaluates whether a visitor meets the condition. If it returns true, the visitor matches the audience.

For example, you could create an audience that only qualifies visitors whose browser window is tall enough to display a large hero image above the fold.

[IMAGE: Screen height ≥ 760px? → Yes → Large-screen audience.]

For most targeting needs, start with rules-based audiences. Use code-based audiences when the targeting logic you need isn’t available through rules.