Cohort Exploration in Google Analytics 4: How to Retain Customers More Effectively

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Cohort exploration is an important marketing analytics technique. The cohort exploration report in Google Analytics 4 allows you to analyze common characteristics of different groups of users to track and understand their actions better. In this article, I'll explain:

What is cohort exploration.
How to open the cohort exploration interface in Google Analytics 4.
What the customized report looks like.
What are the limitations of the report.
How to grant access to reports.
What is cohort exploration
Cohort exploration is a free tool available in Google sweden number dataset that has become more flexible and powerful in the fourth version. Its main purpose is to display user retention and churn rates by advertising source, campaign, etc.

A cohort is a group of users with a common characteristic, such as user acquisition date, age, gender, etc. For example, a cohort would include all users who installed the app within a month.


User behavior is the actions users take on a website or app, such as making a purchase, adding an item to a cart, etc. Cohort exploration allows you to see their behavior over time. For example, how many users in a cohort make repeat purchases in the months following their first contact.

Cohort exploration allows you to identify the factors that led to better user retention or, vice versa, user churn. It is many times less expensive to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. Customers who return are more loyal, buy more often, spend more, and bring their friends and family.

This research also allows you to identify high-value cohorts and allocate your marketing budget more profitably.

How to open a cohort exploration in Google Analytics 4
An exploration is created based on the data collected in Google Analytics 4. To open the cohort exploration builder, follow these steps:

Open Google Analytics 4.
In the left menu column, navigate to Explore.
Click the Template gallery button.
Click the Template gallery button

In the Template gallery, select the Cohort exploration method.


The Cohort exploration builder opens with default data.
The Cohort exploration builder opens with default data

Change the exploration settings to get the data you need.

Cohort exploration configuration
The cohort exploration report is very flexible. You can easily change various parameters to obtain a wide range of data.

There are three tabs: Variables, Settings, and Cohort exploration. The last tab displays the data based on the settings in the previous two tabs.

The last tab displays the data based on the settings in the previous two tabs

Variables
There are many different parameters, segments, and metrics. You can select the ones you want to work with in the future.

All metrics, segments, and parameters added to the Variables tab are initially displayed only on this tab. To include them in the report, drag them to the Settings tab.

Let’s go into more detail about the Variables elements and how to use them.

Exploration name
Exploration names should be clear and easy to understand so you can easily find them by name in the Explore section. GA4 automatically saves names and edits, so there is no button to save them.