OmniRetail / Omnibiz · Product Design
Making "Not Here Yet" Feel Like A Preorder, Not A Dead End
Omnibiz operates across a growing set of countries, but not every country yet, and not every product in every country it does operate in. Two moments kept producing the same dead end: a retailer switches their location to a market Omnibiz hasn't launched in yet, or browses a product that isn't live in their specific region. Both defaulted to an empty catalog with nothing to do next. For a retailer base already past 150K, that's a lot of silent demand going unmeasured.
Two Different Dead Ends
Unserved Market
A retailer changes their location to a country Omnibiz doesn't operate in yet. The catalog comes back empty, no products, no explanation, no path forward. It reads like a bug, not a "not yet."
Unavailable-In-Region Product
A specific product isn't live in the retailer's region, even though Omnibiz operates there. The default instinct was to hide it entirely, which keeps the catalog clean but throws away a real signal: someone wanted that product, here, now.
Constraints
- One primary action per state, a retailer who just hit a wall doesn't need five options, they need the one that gets them unstuck.
- The two cases needed genuinely different messaging: "we're not in your country yet" is a different promise than "this product isn't in your region yet."
- Any interest captured (a preorder, a notify-me) had to feed something real internally, a demand signal for expansion and sourcing, not a UI dead end with no backend meaning.
- Had to work inside Omnibiz's existing retailer-app IA, not as a bolted-on separate flow.
The Design
Unserved Market · "Notify Me"
Replaced the blank catalog with a direct statement, Omnibiz isn't in this market yet, and one action: get notified at launch. No product grid pretending to load, no dead scroll area.
Unavailable-In-Region · Preorder
Kept the product visible in the catalog rather than hiding it, marked clearly as preorder with the regions it's currently live in, and gave a single "Reserve this" action. The product stays discoverable; the unavailability is honest rather than hidden.
The One Decision
I chose to keep out-of-region products visible and preorderable rather than hide them, even though hiding them would have made the catalog feel more "finished" and consistent, every visible product actually purchasable. I traded that cleanliness for a persistent demand signal: every preorder is a data point on where Omnibiz should expand next or prioritize sourcing, which a hidden product can never generate. A tidier catalog was worth less to the business than a live map of unmet demand.
What I'd Measure
What Would Prove This Wrong
If preorder conversion stayed near zero and retailers found visible-but-unavailable listings confusing rather than informative, that would mean the demand-signal bet was wrong for this audience, and hiding unavailable products behind a separate, opt-in "notify me about new markets" flow would have been the better call.
Reflection
The instinct with empty states is usually to make them feel less empty, an illustration, a friendly line of copy. The actual fix here had nothing to do with charm: it was recognizing that "we don't have this" and "we don't have this yet" are different promises, and that an empty state can double as a lead-generation surface for expansion decisions if you design the intent capture deliberately instead of defaulting to a blank grid.
Status: Real feature area within the OmniBiz Retailer App at OmniRetail (Omnibiz), not a hypothetical brief.
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