What Is Google Analytics Cohort Analysis?

A cohort analysis in Google Analytics allows you to track the behavior of specific groups of users over time. Understanding these behavioral patterns and trends can provide important insights to inform your marketing strategies, improve user experiences, and increase customer retention rates. Discover how to perform a cohort analysis in Google Analytics by exploring different cohort types, why you might choose this analytics approach, and the steps you can take within Google Analytics to explore your cohorts.

Google Analytics cohort analysis basics

A cohort analysis is a type of behavioral analysis that groups users with a common characteristic into a “cohort.” This could refer to a group of people within a specific age range, customers who purchased a specific item in a given time frame, or really anything relevant to your research question. By defining your cohort, you can evaluate how a particular group behaves, compare their behaviors to other cohorts, and track performance over a period of time.

In Google Analytics, you might define your cohort by their acquisition date, transactions made, conversion data, or other metrics of how they interact with your site. For example, you might look at customers who signed up for a membership in January, those who signed up for a free trial during fall months, or those who subscribed after a specific outreach email or via organic search. This allows you to explore how different customer segments of your audience behave to inform your marketing strategy.

Types of cohort analysis

When defining your cohort, you can choose two main types: acquisition-based cohorts and behavioral cohorts. Each defines your groups in different ways, depending on what you want to assess.

Acquisition cohort analysis

With an acquisition-based cohort, you’re looking at customers based on when they start using or interacting with your product. For example, you might track a cohort of users after they download the app, or customers who purchased your product in a specific month. 

An acquisition-based cohort analysis helps you determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns with different groups. You’re figuring out how to acquire customers and how to keep them. For instance, if you saw the most purchases from users who downloaded your app in February, this may indicate your marketing efforts were especially successful that month.

Behavioral cohort analysis

You’ll define behavioral cohorts based on user actions with your product or service. For example, you might look at the lifetime value of customers after their first purchase of one of your products. If you notice that a specific cohort is more likely to create shopping carts on your site but never press “purchase,” this provides insights you can use to create more targeted campaigns for that group.

A behavioral cohort analysis is ideal when you want to find ways to increase customer retention and revenue. If an analysis shows you that customers who “favorite” items on the website are more likely to go back and buy them, you can put effort into incentivizing users to create wishlists.

What can you use Google Analytics cohort analysis for?

You can use a Google Analytics cohort analysis to better understand your users, improve marketing campaigns, and make informed decisions to increase customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. You might choose to create a cohort analysis to:

• Measure the impact of a new marketing campaign.

• Identify the most effective marketing strategy.

• Track customer behavior trends.

• Improve engagement for specific customer segments.

• Understand and improve customer retention.

• Optimize product development. 

• Develop more targeted communication strategies.

• Reduce churn rates.

How to run a cohort analysis in Google Analytics 

In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you can track how your customers behave over time based on defined characteristics, such as when you acquired them or when they made a purchase. Once you’ve created a Google Analytics account with at least analyst-level access, you can follow these steps to create your analysis:

1. Open the cohort exploration template.

Open Google Analytics and navigate to “Explore.” From here, click “Template Gallery” and select “Cohort exploration.” 

2. Define your cohort. 

Next, navigate to “Cohort inclusion” to define your cohort by the criteria you want to look at. You can define when a user enters the cohort by inclusion criteria like their first touch (acquisition date), any transaction, any event, any conversion, or custom criteria. You can also use “Return criteria” to define how someone stays in the cohort, like having at least one event, transaction, or conversion over a given time frame.

3. Set your granularity.

You can decide how often you measure customer behavior for initial and returning cohort requirements using “cohort granularity.” Common choices are daily, weekly, or monthly. 

4. Choose your calculation method. 

Calculate user activity using standard, rolling, or cumulative calculations. Standard calculations include all users who meet the criteria during the current period, regardless of past activity. Rolling calculations include users who meet the criteria in the current and previous periods. Cumulative calculations include users who have met the criteria in any period.

5. Add a breakdown.

If relevant, you can add a breakdown dimension to compare how subgroups of your cohort compare. You could look at people of different ages, geographic locations, and so on.

What is user activity by cohort?

In Google Analytics, you can use the “user activity by cohort” card to see whether users acquired on a certain date return to your website at a greater frequency than users acquired on other dates. You can use this card to see which acquisition dates lead to the highest rate of return. This can help you find which acquisition dates and acquisition triggers (such as a campaign) were most successful.

Benefits of Google Analytics cohort analysis

Using a cohort analysis in Google Analytics can provide several strategic benefits. For new customers, you can track retention to see how long they stay engaged after their first download or purchase. You can also look at which campaigns led to the most new users, and whether redesigns or product launches brought in new types of customers. 

For existing customers, you can see how they behave during different seasons or campaigns, and use their behavior to tailor messaging, product recommendations, and remarketing efforts. You can also identify signs that a user might drop off soon and intervene with retention campaigns or improvements. By taking advantage of performance tracking, you can make smarter decisions about how to recruit and retain your customer base, helping support your organization over time.

Google Analytics cohort analysis best practices

When it comes to your cohort analysis, you want to ensure you’re taking the necessary steps to produce accurate insights. Some best practices to keep in mind include:

• Clearly define your cohorts. Don’t be vague with inclusion criteria.

• Choose your metrics carefully. Take time to decide which insights are most relevant to you.

• Take external factors into account. Don’t ignore how seasons or market trends may influence your customer behavior.

• Continue collecting data. Your cohort analysis should be an ongoing process, rather than a one-time endeavor.

• Take advantage of small cohorts. Small groups can provide meaningful insights.

• Iterate and test again. Once you analyze your results, test different strategies to see what improves the customer experience and reduces churn.

Get to know Google Analytics on Coursera

A Google Analytics cohort analysis provides insights into the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, how different customer segments behave, and how you can improve your customer engagement. 

The first step to building your own cohort analysis is understanding Google Analytics and the capabilities you can work with. The Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate on Coursera can help you learn how to use Google Analytics to visualize and present data findings in dashboards, presentations, and commonly used visualization platforms.