Measuring
Products.

A practical playbook for turning product behaviour into better decisions.

Chapter 7

Workflow steps and user behaviour

Workflow steps help teams break behaviour into meaningful moments that can be observed, understood, and improved.

A workflow step is a meaningful point in a user’s progress through a workflow.

The word meaningful matters. A step should describe behaviour that helps the team understand progress, friction, failure, or completion. It should not simply mirror a screen, button, component, or implementation detail.

For account registration, useful steps might be:

  1. 1

    View registration form

  2. 2

    Enter details

  3. 3

    Submit form

  4. 4

    Verify email

  5. 4

    Access product

The steps are useful because they describe progress from intent to outcome. They also give the team a basis for deciding what event evidence should exist.

Bad and better workflow steps

Weak step Better step Why it is better
Registration page View registration form Describes behaviour, not just a screen
Continue button Submit registration form Describes the meaningful action
Error state See validation error Describes what happened to the user
Confirmation screen Verify email Describes progress in the workflow
Dashboard loaded Access product Describes the outcome the user reached

The weak versions may still matter to designers or engineers. They are just not usually the best measurement unit.

Steps reveal where progress breaks

A workflow such as “register for an account” is useful, but too broad to diagnose on its own. If completion falls, the team needs to know where the problem is happening.

Maybe fewer users submit the form. Maybe validation errors increased. Maybe users submit the form but do not verify email. Maybe they verify email but do not reach the product.

Clear steps turn a vague workflow problem into a set of possible investigations.

Steps are not events

A workflow step describes a meaningful moment. An event records that the moment happened.

Workflow step:
Submit registration form

Event:
registration.form_submitted

Keeping this distinction prevents tracking from becoming too tied to interface details. The team defines the behaviour first, then decides which event should capture it.

A step can also exist before tracking is implemented. That is useful: it lets the team design measurement before it asks engineering to instrument anything.

Good steps create better metrics

Clear workflow steps make it easier to create useful metrics:

  • start count
  • step completion rate
  • drop-off between steps
  • error rate at a step
  • time between steps
  • completion rate by entry point, device, or user type

The metrics are useful because they are tied to progress. They help teams see where users move forward, slow down, fail, or leave.

Practical rule

Write workflow steps as short verb phrases.

Prefer:

Submit application
Upload document
Select subscription plan
Confirm payment
Create retrofit plan

Avoid:

Application page
Upload component
Pricing card
CTA click
Screen 4

A good step should be clear enough that product, design, engineering, research, and analytics can recognise the same behaviour.

Key takeaway

Workflow steps are the bridge between a broad workflow and observable product behaviour.

Define the behavioural steps before naming events. Otherwise, tracking can become precise without being meaningful.