Google Analytics has recently added a new report under the heading “Public”: it’s the Cohort analysis; let’s see how it can be useful to get a more precise picture of user behavior!
According to Google definition in the guide, Cohorts are “sets of users organized into groups united by a common element and a period”.
For example, if we take the common element of having made a purchase and the last week as the time period, you will have 7 Cohorts:
Cohort 1: Made a purchase 7 days ago
Cohort 2: Made a purchase 6 days ago
Cohort 3: They made a purchase 5 days ago
And so on until yesterday.
Cohorts allow you to compare the behavior of users belonging to different groups. For example, you can see how often users you acquired last month return to your site and compare that data to users you acquired this month.
The data is filterable by
The cells of the table, colored in different shades of blue, show the percentage of users who match the selected metric (in this case, “User Retention”) out of the total population of that cohort. The higher the percentage of users who meet the metric, the more intense the blue color.
The use of cohort analysis can be a convenient tool for strategic planning of one’s investments. Identifying the moments in which users tend to forget about your site (depending on the metric you choose: that they buy less, that they have fewer sessions, that they complete fewer objectives, etc.) will help you to identify 2 things:
Remember that, like all other Google Analytics reports, you can only get really useful data by segmenting traffic. Use advanced segments to create specific Cohorts to help you find answers to your various questions.
Example 1. A first operation could be to divide the traffic between “organic” and “paid” using the pre-set segments, keep the same “User retention” metric but set the Cohort Size based on the week to have a broader view :
As you can see in the table above, this first segmentation clearly shows how the degree of loyalty of the cohorts of users who come from organic search is much higher than that of users who come from paid traffic.
Example 2. You can set up the “Traffic with Transactions” segment to create specific Cohorts of users who have purchased (therefore Customers!) and understand if your communication is able to bring those people back to your content even after making the purchase.
The new “Cohort Analysis” report is an excellent tool for analyzing the behavior of homogeneous groups of users in relation to the behavior of the total population as a whole.
This is especially useful for
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