Retention
Cohort analysis of who comes back and when.
Retention groups visitors by when they first arrived and tracks how many come back in each following period, so you can see whether your product actually keeps people.
Before you start
Retention is locked in stateless mode. Measuring who returns across days needs a stable identity, and stateless visitor ids reset daily. Switch the site to persistent mode or call identify() to unlock it.
What you see
The cohort triangle has one row per cohort and one column per period since entry. Each cell is the share of that cohort still active in that period.
- Interval: Daily, Weekly, or Monthly (default Weekly).
- Periods: how many columns to show, 8, 12, or 26 (default 12).
- Basis: read each cell as a percentage of the original cohort, or as a percentage of the previous period.
Two criteria define what counts:
- Entry criterion: first seen (default) or a saved goal.
- Return criterion: any visit (default) or a saved goal.
Reading the cells
- Dashed cells mark a period still in progress, so its number will keep rising.
- Hatched cells mark low sample, fewer than 10 visitors, where the percentage is noisy.
Click a cell to drill into its visitor list. Click a cohort label to plot its decay curve, and compare up to 6 cohorts on one chart. A weighted average retention curve summarizes all cohorts together.