Salesforce Winter ’25 Release: 6 Major Experience Cloud Changes You’ve Got to See
The Salesforce Winter ’25 release brings a focused set of improvements to Experience Cloud, covering LWR site design, SEO, data capture, and file handling. If you manage portals, community sites, or branded digital experiences, this release touches nearly every layer of your setup.
Here’s what’s changing: design controls for LWR sites, SEO-friendly URL slugs, data providers in beta, revamped navigation components, expanded Data Cloud event tracking, and file upload support for LWR, plus a few notable minor additions. For the whole list of changes and release notes, please click here.
You can also watch a quick video recap of all six Salesforce Winter ’25 Experience Cloud updates we’ve mentioned above:
1. Brush up on the Look and Feel of an LWR Site
The latest Salesforce Winter ’25 Release lets us play around with more design and layout controls. If previously, you could customize only a full section or an entire site, you can now customize the color palette for an individual Column component.
Theme Layout Settings for Scoped Header/Footer
Pages using the Scoped Header and Footer theme layout component on LWR sites built with the Build Your Own template now have access to a new Theme Layout Settings panel.
Where to find it: Experience Builder → Theme → Theme Layout Settings.
Two new options are available:
- Fix theme header — the entire header region sticks to the top of the page while scrolling
- Position theme footer at page bottom — the footer stays anchored at the bottom regardless of content length
You can also access that via Settings → Theme in the Scoped Header and Footer section.
More Color Control
The updated Buttons panel lets you configure colors separately for primary, secondary, and tertiary buttons. For each button type, you can define:
- Background, border, and text color
- Three states: default, hover, and focus
With the updated Theme → Buttons panel, you won’t find the property for Button Active color anymore. Nevertheless, you still have the option to utilize the –dxp-s-button-color-active styling hook in your CSS to define the color of an active button.
Color Palette for the Columns Component
You can now apply a color scheme at the Columns component level on all LWR sites. No more overriding section-wide styles to get a different column color.
How it works: In the component property panel, select a color from the Color Palette menu, or click New to create a custom palette for that component. Any palette you create or modify at the column or section level will appear in the Theme panel for reuse.
Headings Appearance
You can now customize Heading 5 and Heading 6 in the Theme → Text panel, just like other heading levels. Configurable attributes include font family, font size, character spacing, and more. Both heading levels are also accessible via the Text Style menu in the Text Block component.
Why It Matters
- Faster brand alignment across multi-page LWR sites without custom CSS
- Button and column styling is now admin-accessible, not just developer work
- Consistent UI across desktop and mobile becomes easier to maintain
- More visual control over typography without touching code
2. Customize the URLs for Accounts and Contacts to Enhance SEO (Generally Available)
Previously, SEO-friendly URL slugs were only available for custom object pages on enhanced LWR sites, and for Product and Catalog pages on LWR Commerce sites. With Winter ’25, this feature is now generally available for Account and Contact pages too.
What Are URL Slugs?
A slug replaces the record ID in a page URL with readable, keyword-relevant text. Instead of /accounts/001Xx000003GYnM, users (and search engines) see something like /accounts/acme-corp. This helps search engines index your pages more effectively and improves organic visibility for your LWR site.
How to Enable SEO-Friendly URL Slugs
Where to find it: Site Workspace → Administration tile → Preferences → Use SEO-Friendly URL Slugs
Toggle the setting on to activate slug generation for Account and Contact record pages.
You can import slugs from a CSV file via Object Manager. Add the SEO tab to Lightning record pages to create and edit slugs individually at the record level.
3. Enhance Your LWR Site Experience by Curating Data Providers on a Page (Beta)
This update introduces Data Provider Configuration at the page level in Experience Builder. It lets you define and manage where a page pulls its data from, whether that’s an Apex class or a standard Record data provider.
What You Can Do
- Set up multiple data providers per page
- Use data from Apex or Record data providers in the page and its individual components
- Centralize data retrieval logic at the page level instead of component-by-component
Where to Find It
Experience Builder → Pages → [three-dot menu next to page name] → Page Settings → Data (Beta) tab
Data Provider Configuration is a pilot or beta service that is subject to the Beta Services Terms at Agreements – Salesforce.com or a written Unified Pilot Agreement if executed by Customer, and applicable terms in the Product Terms Directory. Use of this pilot or beta service is at the Customer’s sole discretion. Functionality, behavior, and API shape may change before GA.
4. Customize Navigation and More with Revamped Components for LWR Sites
Winter ’25 brings meaningful updates to several core LWR site components: most notably the Navigation Menu, with a new beta Site Header and improvements to the Grid component, rounding things out.
Navigation Menu Component
You can now fine-tune the Navigation Bar (desktop) and Mobile Navigation (mobile) within the same Navigation Menu component — no code required.
Where to find it: Page Structure → Navigation Bar → Settings
Configurable properties include:
- Colors, borders, spacing
- Text styles and accent lines
- Separate configurations for desktop and mobile
Responsive behavior: On tablets, landscape mode shows the desktop navigation; portrait mode shows the mobile navigation.
Supported menu item types: External URL, Menu Label, Salesforce Object, Site Page.
Site Header Component (Beta)
A new Site Header component is available in beta. It includes slots for your company logo, a navigation menu, and a call-to-action button. You can add or remove sub-components based on your layout needs.
Note!Responsive properties are only functional in enhanced LWR sites for this component.
To use it with the Microsite template: Settings → Theme → Generate a theme layout using Simple Theme Layout → Apply the new layout to target pages → Remove the default header → Add the Site Header component
Grid Component
The Grid component now supports an option to resize all cells to match the height of the tallest container. This makes vertically uneven content look consistent across columns. It’s useful for card-style layouts.
Site Logo Update
On LWR sites built with the Build Your Own or Microsite template, the Site Logo component now shows a placeholder graphic when no logo has been set, making it easier to spot and configure during setup.
5. Use Improved Data Cloud to Capture More Events
E-commerce folks, this is your high time! Data Cloud integration in Winter ’25 adds tracking for a wider range of checkout and cart events, which means richer behavioral data without custom instrumentation.
New Events You Can Now Capture:
- Begin checkout
- Enter contact info during checkout
- Register during checkout
- Enter shipping address during checkout
- Enter billing address during checkout
- And a lot of others! Check out the full list in the official release notes.
Where to find it: Experience Builder → Settings → Integrations → Data Cloud tile → Add to Site (in our screenshot, it’s currently unavailable) → Share site data with Data Cloud
Once Data Cloud is enabled, the integration version appears on the integration card. After any version upgrade, publish your site to begin sending updated engagement data to Data Cloud.
6. Link Files from Your LWR Site to Salesforce (Beta)
The File Upload Lightning web component is now available for LWR sites, including enhanced LWR sites. Previously, this component was only supported on Aura sites.
Users on your LWR portal or community site can upload files directly to your Salesforce org using the native File Upload component — no custom development required.
Where to find it: In Salesforce Setup, use the Quick Find box → Salesforce Files → General Settings.
Two options to enable:
- Allow site guest users to upload files — enables file upload for unauthenticated visitors
- Use the File Upload Lightning web component for LWR sites (Beta) — activates the LWR-compatible version of the component
This feature is in beta. Test in a sandbox before deploying to production, and monitor Salesforce release communications for Generally Available timing.
Minor Experience Cloud Enhancements in the Salesforce Winter ’25 Release
This was quite a list of top upgrades Experience Cloud faces this release. However, we don’t want to leave some minor yet powerful improvements away.
Export and Integrate Shared Business Across Salesforce Orgs with Partner Connect
You can simplify cooperation on the business you share with reliable associates. Partner Connect establishes a secure connection between two Salesforce orgs, enabling a partner to transfer specific records from a vendor’s Experience Cloud site to the partner’s org. This connection remains active for the exported records, offering vendors and partner users a read-only view of the independent progress of the records for each company.
Improve LWR Site Performance with Experience Delivery (Pilot)
Enhance the scalability and speed of your LWR sites by utilizing Experience Delivery, an advanced new platform for hosting LWR sites. In addition to rapid page loading times, this updated platform offers enhanced security and search engine optimization.
To participate in this pilot, contact your Salesforce account executive. This pilot is for developers who are familiar with:
- Building LWR or enhanced LWR sites with Experience Builder
- Developing custom Lightning web components that are server-side ready
- Working with Salesforce DX
Use the Latest Features from Mobile Publisher for Experience Cloud
The Mobile Publisher is now available for Experience Cloud LWR sites. You can protect your app’s information by activating snapshot prevention, which hides the app’s snapshot when it’s running in the background on a device.
Additionally, you can now configure Marketing Cloud notifications for an Android app using consolidated Google Firebase fields in the Mobile Publisher Setup.
Key Takeaways
- LWR design controls are now more granular — admins can style buttons, columns, and headings (including H5/H6) without custom CSS, directly from Experience Builder.
- SEO-friendly URL slugs for Accounts and Contacts are GA — replacing record IDs in URLs improves search engine indexing and organic traffic to your LWR site pages.
- Navigation and layout components got a real upgrade — the Navigation Menu now supports separate desktop/mobile configurations, and the new Site Header component (Beta) gives you logo, nav, and CTA in one place.
- File Upload is finally available on LWR sites (Beta) — guest and authenticated users can upload files directly to Salesforce without Aura or custom development.
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