The step funnel

The Step funnel sits on a guide's Overview tab, labelled "% of users reaching each step". It's the one chart in Reveal that tells you which part of a guide to fix.

It has its own range selector, separate from the rest of the page, defaulting to Last 30 days. A funnel needs traffic before its shape settles, so it looks back further than the dashboard does.

What it shows

Each bar is one step of the guide. The percentage is the share of users who started the guide and reached that step.

Every step is measured against step one, not against the step before it. So if step four reads 60%, that means 60% of everyone who started the guide got as far as step four. It doesn't mean 60% of the people who reached step three. That matters when you read the chart, because a series that goes 100, 92, 88, 60, 55 is describing one bad moment, not four.

Before a guide has data the funnel reads "No steps recorded yet. Record this guide to see funnel data."

How to read it

Look at the shape before you look at the numbers. You're not trying to hit a target percentage, you're looking for the cliff.

A funnel that slopes down gently is a normal guide. People drop out steadily across any walkthrough, and there's no single thing to fix.

A funnel that holds steady and then falls off sharply at one step is telling you something specific. That step is where your guide stops working. Everything after it is downstream of one problem, and the steps below the cliff are usually fine, they just never got an audience.

A funnel that falls hard at step one or step two is usually not a content problem at all. People are starting the guide and bailing immediately, which points at the trigger or the moment the guide fires rather than what it says.

Drop-off

Drop-off is the difference between one step's completion and the step before it. If step three sits at 88% and step four sits at 60%, step four's drop-off is the 28 points between them.

A large drop-off at a single step is the thing worth acting on. That's where you rewrite or re-record. Spread-out drop-off across every step is a length problem rather than a step problem, and the fix there is a shorter guide.

Note. Read drop-off relative to your other guides rather than against a fixed number. What counts as a bad drop depends on the guide's length, its audience, and how much traffic it has seen. A guide with a handful of starts can produce a dramatic looking funnel that means nothing yet.

How to act on a cliff

Once you know which step people leave on, open the Steps section under the funnel and look at what that step actually does. Four fixes cover most cases.

Shorten the step. The most common cause of a cliff is a clip that runs long. If the step takes forty seconds to explain a click, people leave before the click.

Say the button name out loud. A user who can't work out what to press stops. Naming the exact label in the recording, rather than saying "click here", removes the guesswork.

Split a step that does two things. If one step asks the user to fill a field and then open a different panel, it's two steps wearing one coat. Splitting it gives people a completion in the middle, and gives you a funnel bar that tells you which half is the problem.

Check the element selector still matches. If you shipped a UI change since recording, a step may be pointing at an element that no longer exists, and the guide stalls there for everyone. A cliff that appears suddenly on a guide that used to perform well is nearly always this. The guide's Issues tab is worth a look, and troubleshooting goes further.

Re-recording a single step is cheap. Each step is its own clip, so you can replace step four in the Chrome extension without touching the rest of the guide.

Where drop-off shows up elsewhere

You don't have to open every guide to find the bad ones.

On the Guides page, click Tweaks and turn SHOW DROP-OFF to On. Drop-off then appears on the guide cards, so you can scan the whole workspace at once and see which guides deserve attention.

On the Dashboard, the Needs attention spotlight surfaces an underperforming guide for you, showing DROP-OFF, VS LAST WK, and a small STEP FUNNEL strip. When there's nothing to flag it reads "Nothing to flag. No underperforming guides."

Between those two, the weekly routine is short: check the dashboard, open whatever it flags, find the cliff, fix one step.

Next steps

• Analytics: Every metric and what a bad one means.

• Ratings and feedback: Why people left, in their own words.

• Record a guide: Re-record the step the funnel pointed at.

• Organize guides: Filters and Tweaks on the Guides page.