Metrics question
New users signing up for FB are not returning after 30 days. How will you identify the problem? Discuss solutions to that.
- Meta
- Metrics
- Medium
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What this question tests
Retention funnel diagnosis: distinguishing onboarding problems from ongoing engagement problems for new users specifically.
How to approach it
- Confirm the scope, this is specifically about new user 30 day retention, distinct from overall platform retention, so segment new cohorts explicitly.
- Break the first 30 days into stages, signup, profile setup, first meaningful action, and habit formation by day 7 to 14.
- Identify where the drop off is concentrated using funnel analysis, many new users never add enough friends to see a compelling feed.
- Hypothesize the cause at the identified stage, an empty or irrelevant feed because the user has not connected with enough people yet.
- Propose a fix targeted at that stage, a stronger friend or contact suggestion flow during onboarding, and define the metric, day 30 retention rate before and after the fix.
What a strong answer includes
- Breaks the 30 day window into specific stages rather than treating retention as one blended number, allowing the real drop off point to be found.
- Names a concrete likely cause, insufficient early friend connections leading to a low value empty feed, a well known driver of early social app churn.
- Proposes a targeted, measurable fix, improved contact based friend suggestions during onboarding, with day 30 retention as the before and after metric.
Common mistakes
- Treating 30 day retention as one number with no funnel breakdown of where users actually drop off.
- Proposing a generic engagement fix like more notifications without identifying the real early stage cause.
- No before and after metric defined to test whether the fix worked.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you distinguish users who left due to a bad first experience versus simple lack of interest?
- What would you test first if the data showed users churn right after signup, before even reaching the feed?
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- You launched a new signup flow to encourage new users to add more profile information. A/B test results indicate that the % of people that added more information increased by 8%. However, 7 day retention decreased by 2%. What do you do?Google · Metrics · Hard
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop