The Full PLG Funnel Audit
Walk your own funnel as a confused buyer, then overlay the data to find your highest-leverage fix
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 93%
To decide where to invest first, Qu runs a full-funnel audit: she personally walks the entire journey as an end user — website, signup, first product experience, checkout, and early emails — noting every point of confusion or friction. She then overlays high-level conversion data at each step. The intersection of felt friction and data drop-off reveals the biggest low-hanging fruit, usually activation or conversion.
Origin
Hila Qu's standard first engagement step with advisory clients, described as something she does 'with a lot of my advisor clients.'
Core principles
- 01Growth is about finding leverage — the smallest investment that yields the biggest result
- 02Experience the funnel as a real, semi-interested buyer would, not as an insider
- 03Combine qualitative friction (your experience) with quantitative drop-off (the data)
- 04Early lifecycle emails are part of the funnel and can rescue a frustrated user
How to run it
- 1
Walk the funnel as an end user
Pretend to be an interested-to-semi-interested buyer. Go through the website (is the value prop clear and attractive?), sign up for the free account/trial (is it smooth?), use the product (do you reach the aha moment fast or get confused?), and try to buy (can you even find how?).
Pro tip Also inspect the first few onboarding emails — a good email can pull a frustrated user back to the product and rescue an aha moment.
- 2
Overlay high-level step data
Ask the company for numbers at each step: visitors on the website, signups, people who hit the aha moment, people who started and completed self-checkout. Define the aha-moment metric together where it's fuzzy.
Pro tip Defining 'how many people hit the aha moment' usually requires discussion because the metric isn't yet agreed on.
- 3
Locate the biggest opportunity
Where your felt friction and the data drop-off coincide is the leverage point. Activation and conversion are the two most common starting places.
Pro tip Low-hanging fruit is common — e.g. a checkout form asking UK-only questions that confuse everyone else and cause drop-off.
Watch out Don't default to acquisition or retention just because they feel important; the audit usually points to activation or conversion first.
In the wild
During one client audit, Qu reached the checkout flow and the form asked a bunch of questions only a UK customer would need. As a US-based person she was confused and dropped off at that point.
→ A concrete, fixable low-hanging fruit surfaced purely by walking the funnel as a real buyer — the kind of friction insiders never notice.
Common mistakes
Auditing from the inside instead of as a real buyer
Insiders skip past friction they've learned to tolerate. Only by walking the journey as a confused, semi-interested user do drop-off points like a mislocalized checkout form become visible.
Relying on experience or data alone
Your walkthrough shows where it FEELS broken; the data shows where users actually leave. You need both overlaid to identify the true highest-leverage fix.
Is it for you?
Best for
Growth leaders or founders with a live-but-underperforming self-serve funnel deciding where to focus first
Not ideal for
Teams that don't yet have the foundational funnel components built (nothing to audit yet)
From the transcript
“one thing I actually do with a lot of my advisor clients as a first step is we do a full funnel audit”
“me as a kind of end user go through the entire journey uh pretend I'm interested, semi-interested, I want to buy from the website”
“you you you will never believe like when I do this audit, there are so many low-hanging fruits usually in this process”
“the kind of checkout form is so confusing, they ask a bunch of questions that only let's say UK customer need”
“I also look at their initial first few emails they send to me because sometimes the email magically can help a lot”
From the episode
The ultimate guide to adding a PLG motion
Hila Qu (Reforge, GitLab)