91% of our users have never seen an empty state.

We designed empty states carefully — friendly illustrations, clear calls to action, helpful copy. Then we measured how many users ever saw one.

New users who saw an empty state: 9%
Users who saw an empty state at any point in their lifetime: 4%
Total empty state views as a share of all page views: 0.6%

We had spent weeks on copy and design for screens that almost nobody encountered. Meanwhile, the "full" states — lists with 1,000 items, tables with 40 columns, dashboards with 12 widgets — had no design attention at all. That is where 99.4% of page views lived, and where users actually struggled.

We shifted design resources to the crowded, long-list, high-density states. Task completion on list-heavy pages rose 17%. The empty states were beautiful and irrelevant.

What screen are you polishing that almost no one sees, and what screen are you ignoring that everyone lives in?