Funnels look objective.
That’s why they are dangerous.
A dashboard shows:
Step 1 → 1000 users
Step 2 → 300 users
And suddenly everyone believes:
“we have 70% drop”.
But real user behavior is much messier.
Users:
• retry actions
• skip steps with SSO
• restore sessions
• reopen screens
• switch devices
Platforms behave differently too:
• iOS tracks on tap
• Android tracks after validation
• one platform misses events entirely
• another sends duplicates
And then companies build “simple funnels” on top of this complexity and treat them as reality.
I’ve seen teams spend weeks solving problems that never actually existed.
Not because the product was bad.
Because the funnel logic was wrong.
Some of the most common issues I see:
• event-count funnels instead of sequential funnels
• inconsistent event timing
• cross-platform tracking drift
• duplicated events
• missing Android/iOS tracking
The scary part?
Broken funnels often look completely believable.
And once leadership sees a chart, it quickly becomes “the truth” inside the company.
#analytics #productmanagement #growth #firebase #mixpanel #abtesting #mobileapps #softwareengineering #productanalytics
Originally published on LinkedIn by X91 Tech.
