Diagnosing an Onboarding Drop-off With a Journey Map

Analytics for a new e-commerce app show that 40% of new sign-ups abandon somewhere between account creation and adding a first payment method, while cart abandonment after that point is only 8%. An interviewer asks you to sketch the journey map you'd document and explain your approach.

1. List the journey map stages you'd document for this flow, from first landing through post-purchase, with a likely touchpoint and pain point at each stage.
2. Describe the emotional curve you'd expect across those stages given the analytics, and where it should dip most sharply.
3. Explain why a strong interview answer here focuses specifically on the account-creation-to-payment stage rather than proposing a redesign of the entire flow.
4. What additional data or research would you gather before proposing a fix, and why shouldn't you skip straight to a solution from the analytics alone?