Focusing on the Long-term
Henning Hohnhold, Deirdre O'Brien, Diane Tang · 2015
Over the past 10+ years, online companies large and small have adopted widespread A/B testing as a robust data-based method for evaluating potential product improvements. In online experimentation, it is straightforward to measure the short-term effect, i.e., the impact observed during the experiment. However, the short-term effect is not always predictive of the long-term effect, i.e., the final impact once the product has fully launched and users have changed their behavior in response. Thus, the challenge is how to determine the long-term user impact while still being able to make decisions in a timely manner.