7 September 2025
Reading funnels without vanity steps
A funnel is a claim about order. Vanity steps are claims about optics. Funnel Cartography is mostly the work of taking the second kind out.
The classic decorative step is a screen view placed between two intents so the conversion rate between them looks less frightening. checkout_viewed after cart_viewed and before payment_started can be a real decision — the person looked. It can also be an automatic render that fires even when the sheet never opened. If you cannot say which, remove it from the ordered list and keep it as a diagnostic event off to the side.
Include the loop
People go back. Apps invite it. A funnel that forbids returns will under-count completion and over-count drop-off at the first hesitation. We draw loops as first-class paths. Ordered funnels are still useful for a board slide; they should be labelled as a simplification, not as a census.
Settings screens are the other omitted geography. A person who opens notifications settings during onboarding is not lost. They are negotiating. If that screen is uninstrumented, your “drop” is a missing street.
One conversion
Pick a single completing event that the server would recognise. Client-only “success” animations are not conversions. If you need a second funnel for a secondary job — save a list, start a trial — give it its own map. Stacking jobs into one slope produces a number nobody can action.
In class we ask: if this step disappeared from the app tomorrow, would the business still need the event? If the answer is only “the chart would look worse”, it was vanity.