Browse Analytics
Cohorts explore
The Cohorts explore follows each new visitor week by week and month by month after their first visit. What it covers, what to know when reading it, and every dimension and metric in it.
The Cohorts explore has one row for every new visitor in each week and each 30-day month after their first visit, up to the twelfth, and one for the first visit itself. Use it for return rates and what new visitors are worth over time, by when and how they first arrived.
Good to know
- A row exists once its period has ended. Week n is the n-th 7 days after the first visit and month n the n-th 30 days, each the visitor's own, so a rate only counts visitors who had the whole period: week 1 is the Visits explore's 7-day return rate, and month 1 its 30-day rate.
- In a cohort table, filter Cohort has had it, so a cell shows only once every visitor of its cohort has had the period, never for its early arrivals alone.
- A visitor is a device for now. Safari and every browser on iOS keep the device cookie 7 days without a visit, so a visitor there who comes back later counts as gone and then as new, and Device id kept tells the two kinds of browser apart.
- A new visitor's first visit was on an allowed origin, and only allowed visits count after it, so a device first seen on a development server is in no cohort.
- The acquisition fields, country and device are the first visit's.
Used on dashboards
Charts on these dashboards are built on the Cohorts explore:
- Retention and cohorts: Return rate and Lifetime value
Dimensions
The Cohorts explore has 23 dimensions.
The cohort
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| First visit | Timestamp | When the visitor's first visit began, which starts their cohort: a date range on it chooses the cohorts. Time intervals: Raw, Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year. |
| Cohort week | Date | The week of the visitor's first visit, from Monday. |
| Cohort month | Date | The month of the visitor's first visit. |
The period
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Period | String | Week, for the 7-day periods after a first visit, or Month, for the 30-day ones. Every row is one or the other, so a chart filters one. |
| Period after the first visit | Number | Which period after the first visit the row is: 1 for the first 7 or 30 days, 2 for the next, up to 12; 0 for the first visit itself. |
| Week after the first visit | Number | On a week's row, which week after the first visit it is: 1 is the first 7 days, 2 the next 7, up to 12. Empty on every other row. |
| Month after the first visit | Number | On a month's row, which 30-day month after the first visit it is: 1 is the first 30 days, 3 the 90 days a value is read at, 12 the 360. Empty on every other row. |
| Cohort has had it | Boolean | Whether every visitor of the row's cohort has had the whole period: its last day's newcomers included, for its week on a week's row and its month on a month's. A cohort table shows a cell only then. |
How the visitor arrived
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Acquisition channel | String | How the visitor's first visit arrived, by the rules of Channel in the page view explore: the channel that acquired them. |
| Acquisition source | String | Where the first visit came from, as the Visits explore's Source reads it. |
| Acquisition medium | String | How the first visit came, as the Visits explore's Medium reads it. |
| Acquisition campaign | String | The campaign the first visit's link carried. |
| Acquisition campaign ID | String | The ad platform's campaign id the first visit's link carried as utm_id. |
| Landing page type | String | The page type of the page the first visit landed on. |
| Device id kept | String | How long the visitor's browser keeps the device cookie between visits: 7 days on Safari and on every browser on iOS, longer elsewhere. A visitor on the first who comes back after a longer gap is counted as gone and then as a new visitor. |
Geo
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Country | String | The visitor's country as a two-letter code, such as GB, from their IP address. IP Geolocation by DB-IP (https://db-ip.com/), CC-BY 4.0. A dashboard showing this must display that attribution. |
| Country name | String | The country's name in English, as the Unicode CLDR gives it, read from Country's code; a code CLDR does not name reads as itself. IP Geolocation by DB-IP (https://db-ip.com/), CC-BY 4.0. A dashboard showing this must display that attribution. |
| Continent | String | One of seven continents, read from Country by the UN's regions: North America includes Central America and the Caribbean. Russia is Europe; Turkey, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are Asia, as the UN files them. IP Geolocation by DB-IP (https://db-ip.com/), CC-BY 4.0. A dashboard showing this must display that attribution. |
Browser environment
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Device class | String | Bucketed from window width, not from the User-Agent. A narrow desktop window reads as mobile, which is the honest answer for a layout question; Device type answers the hardware one. |
Browser, operating system and device
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Device type | String | Desktop, mobile, tablet or smart tv, from the User-Agent header, and unknown where it names no platform: the hardware, where Device class is the layout the window's width gives. A tablet asking for desktop sites, as Safari on iPad does by default, reads as desktop. |
| Browser | String | The browser, from the User-Agent header. A browser built on Chromium that does not name itself there, such as Brave, Arc or a desktop app, reads as Chrome. A page opened inside an app reads as the app where it names itself, such as Instagram or the Google app, and as In-app browser where it does not. An app's own screens, from Kontala's SDK, read as App. |
| Operating system | String | The operating system, from the User-Agent header; iOS includes iPadOS. There is no version beside it, because browsers freeze theirs: Windows 11 reports Windows 10 and every Mac reports macOS 10.15. An iPad asking for desktop sites, as Safari on iPad does by default, reads as macOS, and many Android tablets read as Linux the same way. |
Data source and quality
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Site | String | The property the event was sent to, read from the key it was sent with. |
Metrics
The Cohorts explore has 20 metrics.
New visitors
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| New visitors | Count distinct | Visitors whose first visit is in the rows: each counts once, in the channel and cohort of that first visit. |
| On Safari or iOS | Ratio (%) | The share of new visitors on Safari or on iOS, whose browsers keep the device cookie 7 days between visits: the share of visitors this explore can follow for a week at a time. |
Coming back, at the grouping's period
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Came back | Count | Visitors who made another visit in the period. |
| Return rate | Ratio (%) | The share of new visitors who visited again in the period, over the visitors who have had the whole of it. Read at one period and number: grouped by Week after the first visit, or by Month after the first visit with Period filtered to match. |
Coming back, at fixed horizons
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Back within 7 days | Ratio (%) | The share of new visitors who came back within 7 days of their first visit, over those whose first visit is at least 7 days old: the Visits explore's 7-day return rate. A visit ends after 30 idle minutes, so coming back later the same day counts. |
| Back in week 4 | Ratio (%) | The share of new visitors who visited again in the fourth week after their first visit, 21 to 28 days on, over those at least 28 days old: the base still coming back once the first visit is a month old. Low on Safari and iOS. |
| Back within 30 days | Ratio (%) | The share of new visitors who came back within 30 days of their first visit, over those at least 30 days old: the Visits explore's 30-day return rate. Low on Safari and iOS, which forget a visitor after 7 days without a visit. |
| Back in month 3 | Ratio (%) | The share of new visitors who visited again in the third 30-day month after their first visit, 60 to 90 days on, over those at least 90 days old: where a curve that flattens has flattened. |
Value, at the grouping's period
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue per new visitor | Ratio | Revenue from a new visitor's first visit to the end of the period, averaged over the visitors who have had it: their lifetime value so far. Read at one period and number, as Return rate is. In the order's own currency. |
| Customers | Count | New visitors who had bought by the end of the period. |
| Bought | Ratio (%) | The share of new visitors who had bought by the end of the period. |
| Bought again | Ratio (%) | The share of customers who had bought on a second visit by the end of the period. |
| Revenue per customer | Ratio | Revenue by the end of the period over the new visitors who had bought by then. In the order's own currency. |
Value, at fixed horizons
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue per new visitor, 30 days | Ratio | Revenue within 30 days of a new visitor's first visit, averaged over the new visitors at least 30 days old. In the order's own currency. |
| Revenue per new visitor, 90 days | Ratio | Revenue within 90 days of a new visitor's first visit, averaged over the new visitors at least 90 days old. In the order's own currency. |
| Revenue per new visitor, 180 days | Ratio | Revenue within 180 days of a new visitor's first visit, averaged over the new visitors at least 180 days old. In the order's own currency. |
| Revenue per new visitor, 360 days | Ratio | Revenue within 360 days of a new visitor's first visit, averaged over the new visitors at least 360 days old. The warehouse keeps 400 days, so only visitors first seen 360 to 400 days ago have one. In the order's own currency. |
| Bought within 90 days | Ratio (%) | The share of new visitors who bought within 90 days of their first visit, over those at least 90 days old. |
| Revenue per new customer, 90 days | Ratio | Revenue within 90 days of the first visit, over the new visitors at least 90 days old who bought in that time: what a new customer is worth at 90 days. In the order's own currency. |
| Bought again within 90 days | Ratio (%) | The share of customers within 90 days who bought on a second visit within those 90 days. |