Most designers spend 80% of their time on the wrong screens. Here is which ones actually matter.
Early in my career I did the same thing.
Spent days perfecting the settings page. The profile section. The help center. Screens that look good in a portfolio but rarely decide whether a user stays or leaves.
After 150+ products here is what I know for sure.
These are the screens that actually matter.
The first screen after sign up. This is where most products lose users forever. If someone does not understand what to do in the first 60 seconds, they are gone. Design this one like your product depends on it. Because it does.
The empty state. What does the product look like before the user has done anything? Most teams skip this. The best products use it to guide, reassure, and motivate.
The error state. Users will hit errors. What they see in that moment decides whether they try again or close the tab. A cold error message kills trust instantly.
The upgrade or conversion screen. If you are building SaaS, this screen is revenue. Every word, every layout choice, every CTA placement is a business decision.
The dashboard on day one vs day thirty. They should feel different. New users need guidance. Returning users need speed. Most products design one and call it done.
The homepage gets all the attention. These five screens get all the results.
Which one does your product need the most work on?
Landing page design for Lumo — banking for freelance life
Banks sell control — dashboards, charts, a card floating at fifteen degrees. Freelancers don't want control over their money. They want to stop thinking about it in the gap between sending an invoice and the money landing.
That gap is what the page is built on. The product sits in a meadow instead of on a dark grid, because the promise isn't "manage your finances better" — it's "we handle the part that keeps you up." And the strongest line on the page isn't a feature: no waiting for Monday. Freelancers don't lose weekends to fees. They lose them to timing.
The proof follows the same rule. One freelancer, one number — 4% lost on every international payment. A percentage someone can check against their own account beats any adjective.