Reading drop-offs without guessing

How to separate friction from intent when a funnel step loses half of its traffic.

A 50% drop between step two and three looks dramatic. It may also be expected — users browsing before they commit.

Compare the same step across devices, acquisition sources, and first-time vs returning sessions before rewriting the UI.

Instrument failure states explicitly: validation_error_shown, payment_declined, timeout_retry. Silent exits and hard errors need different fixes.

When the data is thin, say so. A confident narrative on incomplete events is worse than a short list of instrumentation gaps.