Investigate Pop-up Impact on Partner Referral Conversions
Partner-Referral Conversions Fell After App Pop-up: Diagnose, Quantify, and Decide
Context
You are an analytics data scientist at a consumer marketplace. A blocking splash pop-up prompting visitors to download the mobile app was launched on mobile web. Soon after, the partner-referral channel shows a sharp drop in first-time purchaser conversions. Overall online traffic volume is unchanged.
Tasks
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Causal diagnosis: How would you investigate and confirm the pop-up caused the conversion drop from partner links?
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Trade-off quantification: Assuming traffic is unchanged, how would you quantify the trade-off between app-download uplift and lost first-purchase conversions?
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Decision framework: Which metrics and experiment design would you propose to decide whether to keep, modify, or remove the pop-up?
Constraints & Assumptions
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Preserve the scope, facts, inputs, and requested outputs from the prompt above.
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If the prompt leaves a detail unspecified, state a reasonable assumption before relying on it.
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Keep the answer interview-ready: concise enough to present, but concrete enough to implement or evaluate.
Clarifying Questions to Ask
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Clarify the business objective, unit of analysis, time window, exposure definition, and primary metric.
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State assumptions about instrumentation, randomization, sample size, and data quality.
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Separate descriptive analysis from causal claims.
What a Strong Answer Covers
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A metric framework with primary, guardrail, and diagnostic metrics.
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A credible analysis or experiment design with clear assumptions and bias checks.
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SQL/statistical logic for segmentation, variance, confidence, and data validation where relevant.
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An actionable recommendation that explains trade-offs and next steps.
Follow-up Questions
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What sanity checks would you run before trusting the result?
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How would you handle novelty effects, seasonality, or selection bias?
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What decision would you make if metrics disagree?