Cohorts
Grouping customers by the month they first bought, so you can see whether they come back.
A cohort is simply a group of customers who bought from you for the first time in the same month.
The Cohorts screen follows each group forward in time and shows how many came back, and how much they spent when they did. It answers something a sales chart cannot: are the customers you are winning now worth as much as the ones you won six months ago?
How to read the grid
Each row is a month, and it holds everyone who first bought in that month.
Each column is how long after that they came back. Month 0 is the month they first bought. Month 1 is the month after, and so on.
So the number where "March" meets "Month 2" is what your March customers spent in May.
Newer rows have fewer numbers filled in because less time has passed. An empty box near the bottom right is not bad retention, it is a month that has not happened yet.
A customer belongs to the month they first ever bought
If someone first bought from you in 2024 and came back last March, they stay in their 2024 group. They do not become a new March customer.
This matters, because counting returning customers as new ones would make both your new-customer numbers and your retention look better than they really are.
Why the default period is six months
Retention takes time to show up. On a thirty-day view every cohort would only have its first month, which tells you nothing about whether people come back. Six months is enough to see a pattern.
Timezones
Orders are counted using your store's local time, the same way Shopify does it. An evening order in Los Angeles is already tomorrow in UTC, and counting it that way would put some customers in the wrong month.
Related
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