Journal · January 2026
Drop-off is usually a path problem
A step that “loses 40%” is a slogan until you know whether those people ever qualified to enter. In Path Analysis for App Users we draw three maps: the route into the step, the route through it, and the route around it.
The around-map is the one dashboards hide. Deep links, expired magic links, and OS-level permission failures can keep people out of a step that marketing still counts as the centre of the product. Fixing copy inside the step will not touch them.
In Sequence Lab we ask for a count of sessions that viewed a precursor screen and never fired the step’s start event. That number is often larger than the classic drop-off. It is also harder to own, because it sits between teams.
None of this forbids funnels. It forbids using a funnel as a path. If you need a single sentence for a steering meeting, try: “We do not yet know whether people left the step or never arrived with the events required to be counted.” Then go and look.