Field Notes
Permission prompts that quietly end the funnel
Camera and location prompts placed before value moments emptied an early stage of a food delivery path — what the walkthrough showed.
A food delivery startup asked for a Full Funnel Audit focused on first order. Marketing blamed creative. Engineering blamed map SDK latency. The walkthrough told a quieter story.
On first open, the app requested location before showing nearby kitchens. Users who denied the prompt landed on an empty list with a retry dialog that looped. The conversion event for “catalogue_viewed” never fired for that group, so they disappeared from later funnel stages entirely.
What moved first
We ranked relocating the prompt after the user picked a cuisine category, with a clear explanation tied to delivery ETA. The empty state gained a manual address field. Catalogue views among permission-deniers returned in the next build.
Permission dialogs are part of in-app conversion funnel analysis even when they feel like “platform housekeeping.” Treat them as stages with their own drop-off.