Sometimes it’s not the design of your experiment that’s broken. It’s the audience pool.
When your testing base is too small, too tired, or too tapped out, no amount of clever hypotheses can save you.

Here are four practical signs your audience pool might be holding you back:

📉 Low sample size math never works out
You set up the test, run the calculations, and realize it’ll take months (or years!) to get significance. That’s not an experiment—it’s a stalled project.

🐌 Slow ramp to significance
Even when you do run the test, data trickles in so slowly you lose momentum. By the time results arrive, the business has already moved on.

🔁 Repeated exposure patterns
Your customers keep seeing test after test—sometimes the same people end up in multiple experiments. Fatigue creeps in, engagement dips, and results blur.

🛑 Survey drop-off
That “5-minute survey” turns into a 45-second attention span. Response rates plummet, and you’re left with skewed samples that don’t represent reality.

✨ The takeaway: Your experiment is only as strong as the audience behind it. Spotting these signs early gives you the chance to adjust—whether that means redesigning, staggering, or augmenting with synthetic audiences to regain elasticity.

👉 Have you seen any of these signals in your own testing program? Which one trips you up most often?