Counterfactual Analysis: A Powerful Tool For Understanding The Impact Of Your Decisions

Using Counterfactual scenarios while making decisions are really helpful as they help you simulate on how this decision might affect you in the future.

Scenarios Where Counterfactual Analysis Helps

• Policy & Business Decisions: Before making big moves like cutting taxes, changing ad spend, or adjusting product pricing, governments and businesses can simulate "What if we did this?" and see the likely outcomes without the real-world risk.
• Healthcare: Doctors and researchers can compare treatments by asking, "What if this patient had taken treatment A instead of B?" This helps in understanding which approach is truly more effective.
• Marketing & Retail: Brands can test scenarios like "What if we offered a 20% discount instead of 10%?" or "What if we targeted a different customer segment?" to predict changes in sales and behavior before rolling out campaigns.
• Risk Management: Banks and insurers can explore questions like "What if interest rates rise by 1%?" or "What if this customer's income drops?" to better prepare for risks and strengthen decision-making.

How This Works in Practice

Let's see an example on how this works in practice!

So imagine you have an online store and have the data of how much time each user spends on your website, and what customer has bought your product / service. We have other factors as well but let's focus on the time each user spends.

After creating a ML model with time as one of the factors, what we can do is that we can simulate to see how the length of stay on the site impacts the lead score.

The ideal web page browse duration is 10 to 18 minutes. In that period, potential customers engage meaningfully, browse the pages, and show genuine interest in the courses.

On the other hand, users who spend less than 8 minutes on the site have LeadScores that are generally much lower. Such users browse the site superficially, quickly skimming through what the business is providing but without any serious buying intent.

Surprisingly, too much time, more than 20 minutes, actually results in a drop in LeadScore. This loss of LeadScore could be caused by a number of factors:

• Users becoming inactive
• A slow web experience
• Difficulty navigating the site, this leads to confusion or frustration

Hence, to attain the best conversion and engagement rates, we attempt to keep the visitor engaged for the best duration of 10 to 18 minutes.

Actionable Insights

These are the actionable insights we can come up with:

• Speed‐Pitch Content: In your earliest pages or within the first ~30 seconds, deliver the most compelling reason to stay (e.g., a short product demo video, top 3 benefits)
• Immediate Hook: Experiment with a quick pop‐up that highlights your best offer or addresses a common pain point. The goal is to drive them beyond a 1‐minute "skim" session.
• Promote Engaging Content at ~2–3 minutes in: If users typically hit 500–700 seconds around 8–10 minutes, surface a relevant next step for instance, a short case study or curated tutorial.
• High‐Touch CTA: If a visitor or lead crosses ~1100 seconds, prompt them with a "Book a Demo" or "Talk to a Rep" message. They're clearly engaged, so strike while interest is hot.
• Sales Team Alert: Integrate with your CRM so that once a user's session time crosses ~1100 units, your sales team gets an alert to call or send a personalised email.