Design an A/B test for a search ranking change

Last updated: April 9, 2026

Quick Overview

Design an experiment to test the impact of new pricing tiers. Include sample size calculation, metrics, and analysis plan.

Grubhub
Analytics & Experimentation
Product Manager
Grubhub
April 9, 2026
Product Manager
Onsite
Analytics & Experimentation
Medium

269

6

3,545 solved


Design an experiment to test the impact of new pricing tiers. Include sample size calculation, metrics, and analysis plan.

Grubhub asks this during the Onsite to assess your experimentation skills. They want to see how you define success metrics, design controlled experiments, and interpret results with appropriate statistical rigor.

What the Interviewer Expects
  • Design a rigorous experiment with proper randomization and sample size calculation
  • Define primary and guardrail metrics with clear rationale
  • Address novelty effects, network effects, and interference
  • Segment results appropriately and identify heterogeneous treatment effects
  • Propose follow-up analyses when results are ambiguous
Key Topics to Cover
Novelty and primacy effects
A/B testing methodology
Segmentation and heterogeneous effects
Simpson's paradox and ecological fallacy
How to Approach This
  1. Define success metrics carefully. A good metric is measurable, actionable, and aligned with business goals.
  2. Run experiments long enough to account for novelty effects and weekly seasonality.
  3. Use funnel analysis to identify where users drop off for maximum optimization impact.
  4. Segment results by key dimensions (platform, country, user cohort) to catch hidden patterns.
  5. Consider network effects and interference between treatment and control groups.
Possible Follow-up Questions
  • How would you handle interference between treatment and control?
  • What would you do if a stakeholder wants to end the experiment early because initial results look good?
  • How would you handle an experiment where the control and treatment groups are different sizes?
  • What if you discover a bug in the logging during the experiment?
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Browse Analytics Questions
Sample Answer
Problem Setup

The specific analytical question we want to address is: "What is the impact of new pricing tiers on user engagement and order volume on Grubhub?" To answer this, we need to collect data on user intera...

Methodology

For this A/B test, we will randomly assign users to two groups: Group A (control) will see the current pricing tiers, while Group B (treatment) will see the new pricing tiers. To calculate the require...


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