The value moments for the user and the business are sometimes the same. For example, the value moment in shopping apps (e.g., "complete checkout") is naturally tied to revenue. People get value when they buy an item they like; shops get value when people buy that item.
More often, however, the journey to value and the journey to value exchange in digital products are two different journeys. For a fitness app like ClassPass, for example, people get the value when they complete workouts, while ClassPass gets value when people buy workout credits.
Which one of the two drop offs should you focus on? Focusing on value is more helpful for building better products than focusing on revenue. If you optimize your product to get users to pay you but don’t optimize for the value they get, soon you will have a churn problem. In fact, it’s the perfect way to end up with a leaky bucket—many customers who pay once and never come back. This goes back to the point made earlier in the book: if people don’t get value from your product, they won’t use it, and of course they won’t pay for it.
**Key insights:**
* Drop-offs most often occur before the value exchange moment (e.g., before a person submits their credit card information, makes a purchase, etc.).
* The more important drop-off point to track, however, is the drop-off before the value moment. The more people reach value in your product, the more people will reach value exchange.
* The fewer steps to get to the value moment, the fewer points of drop-off you'll encounter.
## Should B2B and B2C companies measure drop off on their user's path to value differently?
**No.** B2B enterprise products are also no longer immune to this type of churn. For a while, CTOs, CIOs, and CEOs of Fortune 2000 companies were purchasing software based on what the analyst firms told them (regardless of whether end users liked or hated the software). But now, especially with freemium products, employees often trial different tools, or purchase paid plans with their credit card, and then expense it (until their IT department figures out that it makes more sense to get a company license). And in many cases, SaaS contracts don’t get renewed shortly after an email goes out to the team with the subject line: “Does anyone use this?”
**Enterprise buyers are not that different from consumers now.** So for any product, B2C or B2B, understanding and measuring value comes first.
## How can I measure user drop off?
We've established that the end goal—the moment where value is realized—should be crystal clear, as should the points leading up to that moment. **If users open your app or product for the first time, what is the shortest and most ideal path to the value moment?** That is the funnel to work with.
Each step, screen, page, or button in that journey is critical and the conversion from one to the next will point you to the areas you need to optimize.
The Mixpanel Funnels report helps you understand and measure drop off within a product.
To build a funnel, head over to the Funnels report in Mixpanel and add steps by selecting events from the drop-down list.
For example, when you select "sign up" and "watch video," you'll see how many people out of those who sign up go on to watch a video. Use filters and exclusion steps (e.g., "exclude users who did not do X") and modify conversion criteria (e.g., rearrange the order or select "any order funnels") to customize your question for Mixpanel.
If you’re thinking, “My product is too complex and unique to have a single path to value,” this is a sign of an insufficiently thought-out product. If you can’t express the path to value and build a funnel, go back to the “sign up” page of your product. As a user, go through all the steps to define the dominant canonical journey in your product.
### Key Questions to Ask
With this funnel in mind, as a PM you can expand the range of questions and ways to focus:
* **Where is the lowest conversion rate?**
* **Do converted users share certain characteristics of behavior?**
* **Are users performing certain steps more than once?**
* **Do users get hung up on certain steps longer than on others?**
And finally, "Where are my users dropping off?" is a good question to ask, but only if you get to the question behind it: **"Where should I direct my resources and creativity to increase the number of users that reach the value moment?"**
### Industry Example
