Building funnels without persistent user profiles
You can still see where onboarding stalls when events are scoped to sessions and hashed keys.
Session-scoped funnels answer most activation questions. You do not need a lifelong profile to learn that step three of onboarding loses half of new installs.
When you need cross-session retention, prefer rotating or hashed identifiers with short retention windows over raw device IDs stored forever.
Server-side events for purchase and subscription changes reduce client-side leakage and keep sensitive fields out of marketing SDKs.
Test your funnel with synthetic traffic that includes edge cases: denied permissions, offline mode, and partial onboarding.
Share funnel definitions with product and support. Misnamed steps create false “drop-offs” that waste sprint capacity.