Empty states are your second homepage

Most SaaS empty states do nothing. They should be doing the work of teaching, converting, and activating new users. Here’s a framework for designing empty states that actually earn their place.

A new user signs up for your product. They go through the onboarding flow. They click through the welcome screen. They complete the setup wizard. And then they land on the screen that, more than any other, decides whether they’ll come back.

The empty state.

The first dashboard with no data in it. The blank project list. The inbox with no items. The reports tab with nothing to report on yet. This screen is, in most SaaS products, treated as an afterthought. A placeholder. A page that exists because the team had to put something there until the user generated content.

This is one of the most expensive design mistakes in SaaS.

The empty state is the second most important screen in your entire product, after the homepage. It’s the moment a user decides whether they understand what to do, whether your product is worth their time, and whether they’re going to come back tomorrow. Most empty states are designed as if none of that is happening.

If your activation rates are soft, your first-session drop-off is high, or new users sign up and never come back, the empty state is almost certainly part of the problem. And unlike most UX issues, it’s also one of the most fixable. Because the work is contained to a handful of screens, it’s one of the few activation improvements you can ship without changing anything else in the product.

Here’s how to think about empty states, why most fail, and what a good one actually does.

Why empty states matter more than teams realise

Empty states get neglected because they feel temporary. The thinking goes: this screen is only here for a moment. The user will quickly create some data, and then this screen disappears. Why over-invest in something the user will only see briefly?

That logic is wrong in three ways.

First, the empty state isn’t brief for the people who matter most. Your most engaged users will rarely see it. Your least engaged users (the ones who signed up, didn’t immediately do anything, and bounced) will see it for a long time, because they never got past it. The empty state is the entire product experience for the users you’re losing.

Second, the empty state is what determines whether a user becomes engaged in the first place. It’s the screen where a new user makes the call: do I understand what to do here, and is it worth the effort? If the answer is no, they close the tab. If the answer is yes, they take an action and become an active user. The empty state is the activation event, dressed up as a placeholder.

Third, your competitors with better empty states are quietly winning. Linear, Notion, Loom, and a handful of other well-designed SaaS products treat empty states as core product experiences, not afterthoughts. Those products are known for getting new users to value quickly, and that’s not a coincidence. They’ve designed the moment most other teams ignore.

What most empty states look like (and why they fail)

Walk through ten random SaaS products as a new user. The empty states will fall into a few familiar patterns, all of them broken in the same predictable ways.

Pattern	What you see	Why it fails
The blank canvas	A page that’s literally empty, with maybe a small “no items yet” label	Tells the user nothing. Forces them to invent their own next step.
The illustration with a vague tip	A cute graphic and a line like “your projects will appear here”	Decorative, not functional. The illustration takes up space the guidance should be using.
The technical placeholder	A line of system-style text like “0 results returned”	Designed for an engineer, not a new user. Makes the product feel cold and unfinished.
The lonely button	A small “Create your first project” button on a near-empty screen	Doesn’t explain what creating a project will do, why the user should do it, or what happens next.
The link to docs	Empty space with “Learn more in our docs” or a help centre link	Sends new users out of the product to read documentation. Most never come back.

What all five of these have in common is that they treat the empty state as a problem to be acknowledged, not a moment to be designed. They communicate “there’s nothing here yet” but fail to do the actual work the screen needs to do, which is to teach, convert, and activate.

What a good empty state actually does

A well-designed empty state is doing four jobs at once. Most SaaS empty states do zero of them. The best do all four.

Job 1: Teach the user what this screen is for

The user has just landed on a tab they’ve never seen before. The empty state’s first job is to make the purpose of this screen unmistakable. Not in technical terms. In the user’s terms.

Bad: “Reports”

Good: “See how your team is performing this week. Reports show you who closed the most deals, which campaigns drove the most signups, and where your numbers are trending.”

The good version tells the user what this screen will be once they have data, which is what they actually need to know.

Job 2: Show the user what value looks like

This is the move that separates great empty states from merely competent ones. Don’t just describe what data will appear. Show it.

The most powerful empty states pre-populate the screen with sample data, a working example, or a fake-but-realistic preview of what the screen will look like once the user has used the product. The user isn’t staring at a blank canvas anymore. They’re previewing the destination.

Linear does this with sample issues. Notion does it with template-as-default. A well-designed analytics dashboard might show “this is what your data will look like” with realistic example numbers and a small label saying “preview, not your real data.”

The psychological shift this creates is enormous. The user goes from “I don’t know what’s supposed to happen here” to “I want my version of this.”

Job 3: Make the next action obvious

The empty state should have one clear next action. Not three. Not a list of “things you can do.” One.

The action should be the single highest-value thing the user can do from this screen, and the button or call-to-action should describe what will happen, not just what they’re doing.

Bad: “Create new”

Good: “Add your first lead”

Better: “Add your first lead and see your pipeline come to life”

That last version isn’t longer for the sake of being longer. It’s longer because it tells the user what’s going to happen as a result of clicking it. The reward is named upfront.

Job 4: Set expectations for what comes next

A great empty state doesn’t just push the user toward an action. It sets a small expectation about what’s about to happen, so the user doesn’t bounce off the next screen either.

If clicking “add your first lead” takes the user to a form, the empty state should hint at that. If it triggers an automated process, the empty state should explain what to expect. If it requires connecting an external tool, the empty state should be honest about that requirement before the user hits an unexpected step.

Empty states aren’t just about getting the user to take the next action. They’re about getting the user to take the next several actions, which means setting them up for what’s coming.

A framework for designing empty states

When we audit empty states for SaaS clients, we score them on a simple five-question framework. Most fail at least two questions. The best pass all five.

1. Does the empty state teach a new user what this screen is for? If a stranger landed here, would they understand the purpose without reading documentation?
2. Does it show what value looks like? Is there a preview, sample data, template, or visual representation of what the screen will become once the user has used it?
3. Is the next action unmistakable? Is there one clear primary action, with copy that describes the outcome, not just the activity?
4. Does it remove rather than add? Is the screen free of decorative elements, multiple competing options, or links that send the user out of the product?
5. Does it match the visual quality of the rest of the product? Or does it feel like a placeholder that someone forgot to design properly?

If your empty states fail two or more of these, you have a high-leverage fix waiting.

The three empty states that matter most

Not all empty states are equally important. If you only have time to redesign three, here’s where to start.

1. The first dashboard a new user sees after signup

This is the single highest-leverage empty state in your entire product. It’s the screen that decides whether a brand-new user understands what to do or bounces. Every other empty state in your product has some context built up around it. This one has none.

If you fix one empty state, fix this one. Treat it like a second homepage. Apply the same level of design care, copywriting, and visual hierarchy that you applied to the marketing site.

2. The empty state of your product’s core feature

Every SaaS product has one or two core features that drive activation. The CRM has the contacts list. The analytics tool has the dashboard. The email tool has the campaign builder. The empty state of that core feature is where users decide whether to invest the effort to use the product seriously.

This empty state needs to do all four jobs (teach, show value, drive action, set expectations) better than any other empty state in the product.

3. The empty state that shows up after a user has been inactive

Most teams design empty states for new users and forget about returning users who lapsed. If a user signs up, uses the product for a week, then comes back two months later to a screen that says “no recent activity,” they’re going to bounce again.

This empty state should be designed to re-engage. Show what’s changed. Show what their team has been doing. Surface something that makes them want to invest again. This is a particularly underused surface for product-led re-engagement.

What good empty states look like in practice

A few real examples worth studying.

Linear’s issue list empty state doesn’t show a blank list. It shows sample issues with realistic data, demonstrating the structure of the product before the user has built anything. The user learns by seeing, not by being told.

Notion’s new page empty state isn’t blank. It shows a gallery of templates that are functional starting points. The user is editing a working document within seconds, not staring at a blank page wondering what to do.

Loom’s recording empty state doesn’t ask the user to configure anything. It pushes them straight toward the core action: hit record. The empty state is essentially a single button that triggers the activation event in one click.

What these three have in common: none of them are trying to communicate “there’s nothing here yet.” They’re trying to communicate “here’s what you can do, in the most direct way possible, with the lowest possible cognitive cost.”

That’s the bar.

How to fix your empty states this quarter

If you want to move activation rates without rebuilding your product, empty states are one of the highest-return places to invest. Here’s a tactical sequence.

1. Audit every empty state in your product. List them out. Most teams have 5 to 15. Score each one against the five-question framework above.
2. Identify the three that matter most. The post-signup dashboard, the core feature, and the re-engagement screen for lapsed users.
3. Redesign those three first. Apply all four jobs (teach, show value, drive action, set expectations). Treat each one as carefully as you’d treat a homepage.
4. Measure the impact. Track activation rate, first-session completion, and 7-day return rate before and after. Within about 30 days you should be able to see whether the change is working.
5. Then work through the rest. Lower-priority empty states still benefit from the framework, but the highest-impact gains come from the first three.

This is work that can be done in 2 to 4 weeks for most SaaS products. The return is usually outsized relative to the effort, because empty states are so widely neglected that even modest improvements stand out.

The bottom line

Empty states aren’t placeholders. They’re product experiences. They’re the screen that decides whether a new user understands your product, whether they’ll take the action that activates them, and whether they’ll come back.

The teams that recognise this design empty states like homepages. The teams that don’t ship blank canvases and wonder why their activation rates are stuck.

Show your designer five randomly chosen empty states from your product, with no other context. If they can’t immediately tell you what each screen is for and what the user should do next, you’ve identified the cheapest activation lift available to your team this quarter.