The first lie is completeness. If step two is “viewed pricing” and step three is “started trial,” anyone who started a trial from an email is a ghost. The funnel reports a drop that was never a drop; it was an uninstrumented door. Label the door. A grey annotation is more honest than a red percentage.
Platforms are not a rounding error
iOS and Android will disagree about the same human. One store shows a sheet, the other a webview, the third a family-plan invite that never fires started_trial. Until those verbs are reconciled — the work of week one in our studio — a blended funnel is a blended fiction. Split first. Blend only when the verbs match.
Timeboxes hide overnight people
Same-session funnels punish anyone who thinks overnight. In the United Kingdom a payday app used between 17:00 and 21:00 will look “leaky” if you insist on a thirty-minute window. Set the clock from actual opening hours, the same discipline we use for activation. Then the leak you still see might be real.
We ask students to write, under every funnel screenshot, one sentence that begins “This chart cannot see…” If they cannot finish the sentence, they do not yet understand the chart. That sentence belongs on the Friday page. It is not a confession. It is the work.
Conversion-rate theatre — adding a step you already won, removing a step you lose — is how teams keep a number still. We will mark that in red. The course is not a place to protect a slide. If you need the slide protected, do not enquire.