Current limitations of cohort analysis

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While cohort analysis can reveal interesting behaviors to detect to guide your strategic decisions, this Google Analytics feature still has some limitations. The first of these is that it is difficult, at present, to determine whether multiple visits come from a single user or not. Ideally, you would need to individually track each user corresponding to the cohort in question, and analyze their behavior on the desired latency. Then, you aggregate all of this individual information to obtain a clear and precise cohort analysis.

Another issue comes from the termination of your analysis. Google Analytics determines that a user “returns” to your site if the user reconnects at least once within 30 days of their initial visit. Let’s say we start a cohort analysis the week of January 1-7, and the analysis ends on February 7. If a user visits your site on January 2, then returns on February 3, this user will not be considered a “return” by Google Analytics, since the user returned 31 days after their initial visit… This is an analysis bias that should not be overlooked, since Google Analytics will record a “new visit,” which is not really a new visit.

How to use cohort analysis for my business?
There is one thing to understand before embarking on cohort analysis: the information you will collect, and the levers you will activate subsequently, will take time to produce their effects. Unlike a remarketing campaign, for example, where the effects are relatively immediate, cohort analysis focuses on user behavior and habits. These are venezuela whatsapp data aspects of marketing that are more difficult to grasp. Between the start of a cohort study period, the analysis at the end of it, the launch of actions supposed to be beneficial, and the analysis of these actions to determine their real effectiveness: it could well take between 4 and 6 months before you obtain tangible results.

While this time frame is quite unusual in web marketing, we should not underestimate the effectiveness of a good cohort analysis! From our point of view, cohort analysis can provide key information when it comes to measuring the effects of a promotional campaign for your business, or measuring the engagement of your consumers over the long term.

Conclusion
In e-commerce, you have to move quickly, much more than in traditional physical commerce. Tools like Google Analytics allow you to obtain almost real-time information that goes in this direction. However, you will not last long if you cannot engage your consumers over the long term. In this respect, cohort analysis proves to be a key tool to immerse yourself in the behavior of your users, and thus identify areas for improvement that will allow your brand to establish itself sustainably. If cohort analysis can be discouraging, due to its complexity and the time required to analyze and act accordingly, you should certainly not neglect it: a good mastery of this tool will be your best ally to improve your user experience.