Increase First Trips for New Riders

Business Context

RideNow is a consumer ride-hailing app. Over the last month, leadership saw new user sign-ups grow, but the number of first completed trips from new users stayed flat, missing the quarterly growth target.

Metric Scenario

In April, RideNow had 120,000 new registrations, up from 100,000 in March (+20%). However, first completed trips only increased from 30,000 to 31,200 (+4%). The overall registration-to-first-trip conversion rate fell from 30.0% to 26.0%. The onboarding funnel for April is:

• Registration completed: 120,000 users
• Phone verification completed: 108,000 users (90%)
• Payment method added: 72,000 users (67% of verified)
• Ride request initiated: 50,400 users (70% of payment-added)
• Driver matched: 40,320 users (80% of requesters)
• First trip completed: 31,200 users (77% of matched)

The GM asks: If you want to increase the number of first trips for new users, which part of the funnel would you focus on first, and why? Assume resources allow only one funnel improvement in the next quarter.

Requirements

1. Define the primary metric and the supporting funnel metrics you would track.
2. Identify the funnel stage you would prioritize first and justify it quantitatively.
3. Distinguish between the stage with the largest absolute drop-off and the stage with the highest business leverage.
4. Propose 2-3 hypotheses for why that stage is underperforming.
5. Recommend one leading indicator and one guardrail metric to monitor after changes launch.

Data Available

• user_signup_funnel event table with onboarding step timestamps
• ride_requests table with request, match, cancel, and completion events
• payments table with payment method attempts, failures, and card type
• driver_supply_hourly table with available drivers by city and hour
• user_profile table with acquisition channel, city, device OS, and signup date