Design the empty state first
The first screen a new customer sees is almost always empty: no projects, no invoices, no messages. Yet in most design files the empty state is the last frame anyone draws, usually a grey illustration and the words “Nothing here yet”.
We now design it first. A good empty state says what will appear here, why it is useful, and offers exactly one action to get there. Sometimes it also shows a sample row so people can see the shape of the thing before they make one.
On Ledgerline this single change did more for activation than the three onboarding emails it replaced.