Analyse experiment results

Team—

This test is inconclusive, not a failure. Activation was 32.9% with the shorter checklist versus 31.2% with the original—a +1.7 percentage-point estimate. But the 95% confidence interval (−1.4 to +4.8 points) leaves room for a modest decline, no effect, or a useful improvement. We haven’t established that the shorter checklist helps—or that it doesn’t.

The test was designed to detect a 3-point effect, so it had limited ability to resolve a smaller gain. That 3-point minimum detectable effect is a planning parameter, not a threshold below which improvements are worthless.

Confusion-tagged support tickets fell from 44 to 29. That’s encouraging, but without comparable exposure counts and uncertainty estimates, it’s supporting evidence rather than proof.

My recommendation: proceed with a staged rollout, retaining a randomized holdout. The shorter flow is already built and takes about a day to ship, making a monitored rollout reasonable—not risk-free. Track seven-day activation and confusion tickets per onboarded user, and agree on rollback criteria before expanding.

Another four weeks would improve sensitivity to roughly a 2-point effect, but would not guarantee a definitive answer. Continue the full test instead if distinguishing a gain of that size would materially change our shipping decision.

Let’s decide based on likely value, downside risk, and implementation cost—not whether the result crossed a significance threshold.

Subject: Shorter onboarding checklist: what the test tells us and what to do

Bottom line: This test didn't fail. It was inconclusive, and I recommend we ship the shorter checklist.

What the result says - Activation was 32.9% vs. 31.2% (+1.7pp). The 95% CI runs from −1.4 to +4.8pp, so "not significant" means we can't rule out zero. It doesn't mean there's no effect. - The data are compatible with a real gain of several points, and also with a small loss. The test was powered to detect 3pp, so a true effect of 1-2pp would probably look just like this. - Support tickets tagged "onboarding confusion" dropped from 44 to 29. The counts are small, so this isn't proof, but it points the same way as the activation estimate.

Why ship rather than keep testing - Shipping costs about a day of engineering, and it's easy to reverse. - The plausible downside is small (about −1.4pp at worst), and the point estimate and the ticket data both lean positive. - Four more weeks would detect ~2pp, but our observed effect is 1.7pp. We could easily wait a month and end up inconclusive again, while half of new users get the longer flow.

Next steps 1. Ship the five-step checklist to everyone. 2. Track seven-day activation against the pre-test baseline for the next 4-6 weeks. If it drops well below ~31%, we revert. 3. Keep tracking the onboarding-confusion tickets. 4. Record the test as "inconclusive, shipped on cost and risk grounds" rather than "failed," so nobody later cites it as evidence that shorter onboarding doesn't work.

If we were weighing a costly or hard-to-reverse change, I'd argue for the longer test. Here the cheaper move is to ship and monitor.

Shorter checklist test — what it tells us and what's next

Hi all,

The shorter onboarding checklist came back "not significant." That doesn't make it a failure, and I don't think we should drop it.

What the test actually says

• B activated at 32.9% vs 31.2% for A, a +1.7pp lift.
• The 95% interval runs from −1.4pp to +4.8pp. Most of that range is positive, and the worst plausible case is a small loss.
• We sized the test to detect 3pp. A real 1–2pp gain was always likely to come back "not significant." The result means the effect is smaller than 3pp or zero.¹ It doesn't mean the change didn't work.

Supporting signal

Support tickets tagged "onboarding confusion" fell from 44 to 29 during the test. We didn't split tickets by arm, so this is directional only. It does point the same way as the activation result.

Recommendation: ship it

• It's already built, and rolling it out costs about a day.
• The likely effect is neutral to positive, and five steps are simpler to maintain than nine.
• Running four more weeks would only detect effects of about 2pp. Our point estimate is 1.7pp, so we would probably still get an ambiguous answer, a month later.

Guardrails

• Watch 7-day activation for the four weeks after rollout. If it drops more than about 1.5pp below the current baseline, roll back.
• Split onboarding-confusion tickets by checklist version from now on, so next time we can tell whether a ticket drop is real.

For future tests

Before launch, agree what we'll do if the result comes back inconclusive. For a cheap, low-risk change like this, "not significant but probably not harmful" should default to ship.

Happy to discuss.