Hello Annabel,

My name is Yosimy from Amplitude Support, happy to help!

The behavior you're observing might be due to how Amplitude handles optional steps in a funnel. When you mark a step as optional in a funnel, Amplitude creates two versions of the funnel - one with the step and one without the step. The conversion take-aways and breakdown table will also reflect these two scenarios. This might explain why you're seeing a higher number of users after the optional step, as it could be counting users who took both paths.

However, there are some limitations to marking a step as optional:

- It is available for Conversion and Conversion Over Time only.
- Only one step can be optional at a time.
- Only middle steps can be optional. First and last steps can never be optional.
- Optional events cannot be reordered.
- Events with a group-by cannot be optional.
- Events comparing multiple events cannot be optional.

You can find more information about this in the Amplitude Help Article.

I hope this helps clarify the situation. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

Best,
Yosimy


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