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Pricing Test

Goal

Pricing optimization is, non surprisingly, another area where data science can provide huge
value.

The goal here is to evaluate whether a pricing test running on the site has been successful.
As always, you should focus on user segmentation and provide insights about segments
who behave differently as well as any other insights you might find.

Challenge Description

Company XYZ sells a software for $39. Since revenue has been flat for some time, the VP of
Product has decided to run a test increasing the price. She hopes that this would increase
revenue. In the experiment, 66% of the users have seen the old price ($39), while a random
sample of 33% users a higher price ($59).

The test has been running for some time and the VP of Product is interested in understanding
how it went and whether it would make sense to increase the price for all the users.

Especially he asked you the following questions:

  • Should the company sell its software for $39 or $59?
  • The VP of Product is interested in having a holistic view into user behavior, especially
    focusing on actionable insights that might increase conversion rate. What are your main
    findings looking at the data?
  • [Bonus] The VP of Product feels that the test has been running for too long and he should
    have been able to get statistically significant results in a shorter time. Do you agree with
    her intuition? After how many days you would have stopped the test? Please, explain
    why.

Data

We have two tables downloadable by clicking here.
The two tables are:
test_results - data about the test
Columns:

  • user_id : the Id of the user. Can be joined to user_id in user_table
  • timestamp : the date and time when the user hit for the first time company XYZ
  • webpage. It is in user local time
  • source : marketing channel that led to the user coming to the site. It can be:
    ads-["google", "facebook", "bing", "yahoo", "other"]. That is, user coming from
    google ads, yahoo ads, etc.
    seo - ["google", "facebook", "bing", "yahoo", "other"]. That is, user coming from
    google search, yahoo, facebook, etc.
  • friend_referral : user coming from a referral link of another user
  • direct_traffic: user coming by directly typing the address of the site on the browser
  • device : user device. Can be mobile or web
  • operative_system : user operative system. Can be: "windows", "linux", "mac" for web,
    and "android", "iOS" for mobile. Other if it is none of the above
    test: whether the user was in the test (i.e. 1 -> higher price) or in control (0 -> old/lower
    price)
  • price : the price the user sees. It should match test
  • converted : whether the user converted (i.e. 1 -> bought the software) or not (0 -> left
    the site without buying it).

user_table - Information about the user
Columns:

  • user_id : the Id of the user. Can be joined to user_id in test_results table
  • city : the city where the user is located. Comes from the user ip address
  • country : in which country the city is located
  • lat : city latitude - should match user city
  • long : city longitude - should match user city

Contributors

Created October 13, 2017
Updated July 24, 2025
rebeccak1/pricing-test | GitHunt