Analyse experiment results

To: Onboarding team Re: Shorter checklist test

Conclusion: This wasn't a failure. It was inconclusive, and the result doesn't support "no effect."

• The point estimate was +1.7pp (32.9% vs. 31.2%).
• The 95% CI runs from −1.4pp to +4.8pp. Effects from slightly negative to clearly useful are all consistent with the data.
• The test was powered for a 3pp lift. A real 1–2pp improvement, which would still be worth having, would usually not reach significance at this sample size.
• Support tickets for "onboarding confusion" fell from 44 to 29. This wasn't a pre-registered metric, and counts this small are noisy, but it points the same way.

Recommendation: Don't treat this as a loss, and don't run the test indefinitely.

1. Ship the five-step checklist to everyone, with a 10% holdout on the old flow. Shipping costs about one day of engineering, the change is easy to reverse, and the evidence leans positive. The holdout keeps measuring the real effect at no extra build cost.
2. Decide the extension question on decision value, not on the test result. Another four weeks would detect roughly 2pp. That is worth doing only if a 2pp lift would change what we do next. If it wouldn't, the holdout gives us enough information.
3. If we extend, make it a new pre-registered analysis. Set the new target effect and sample size now, and don't keep peeking at the current data until it crosses significance. Changing the goalposts after an inconclusive result is how teams end up with false positives.

Bottom line: The checklist is probably neutral to helpful, and it is cheap to keep. Ship it with a holdout, track activation and tickets, and revisit in four weeks.

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.

Team,

Before we write off the shorter checklist as a failure, let’s reframe what the data actually tells us.

“Not statistically significant” does not mean “no impact”—it means our test was underpowered to detect an effect smaller than 3pp. Here is the full picture:

1. The directional signals are uniformly positive: Activation increased by +1.7pp (31.2% → 32.9%). While the 95% CI (−1.4pp to +4.8pp) crosses zero, it leans heavily positive. The downside risk is small, while the potential upside is meaningful.
2. Clear reduction in user friction: Support tickets tagged “onboarding confusion” dropped by 34% (44 to 29). Even if activation were completely flat, cutting nearly half the steps improved user experience and reduced support burden.
3. The cost/benefit is strongly asymmetric: Shipping this takes one day of engineering.

Recommendation: Ship the 5-step checklist to 100% and move on.

Running the test for another four weeks to hit an MDE of 2pp isn’t the best use of our time or traffic. We would burn a month of runway just to confirm what looks like a positive, low-risk change with virtually zero engineering cost.

Let’s bank the operational win (fewer support tickets, leaner UX, likely small activation lift) by rolling it out tomorrow. We can monitor activation metrics in production and direct our experimentation bandwidth toward bigger, higher-leverage bets for Trellis.