Cohort Retention
Last updated
Last updated
One of the classic (and harder to interpret) data visualizations of growth marketers is the cohort retention graph. Such a plot shows you the retention of a given cohort through time (reading left to right on the below chart), or of the same time period (e.g. two time periods in) across different starting cohorts (reading from top to bottom).
As befits a complex plot, the configuration is also slightly complex. The Activating Event is the event that definitionally marks the beginning of the user journey for the purposes of the plot (here, having done a swap). The Retaining Event is what class of event the user must have done to be considered an active user in that cohort (here, the relatively light-touch event of a page view). The period is simply the size of the time step used to define the cohort: daily, weekly, or monthly.
If the retention plot looks too small (only 3x3 say), either reduce the period to something shorter, or lengthen the date range in the upper right-hand side date picker.
