New vs. Returning Users in GA4: How to Build Segments, Reports, and Audiences
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2023
- Want to see your New vs. Returning Users in GA4? This video shows how to make it happen with reports, segments, and audiences.
Have questions or comments? Leave them in the comments. I've been learning / struggling with GA4 over the couple of years, and I'm always up for learning more...and for new video ideas.
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You helped me unlock a situation! thanks
Very glad to hear it. Glad it was useful!
Thanks for the video! I set up my new and return user segments with the (first_visit) and (session_start)-(first visit) dimensions that you recommended, but the total number of (session_start)s ended up being more than the sum of the new and return users.
I checked out some other dimensions and found that if you set your new user segment to "include users when 'new/returning' contains 'new'" and return user segment to "include users when 'new/returning' contains 'returning'", you get a total that's closer to your "all users" number.
Thanks for watching and for your thoughtful comments.
In regards to your first item about session_start, the session count (from the session_start event) should generally be higher than the sum of new + returning users. That's because session count and the users metric are measuring different things.
Let's say you have 100 visitors during a given time frame. GA4 doesn't recognize 60 of them as having been on your site before based on a preexisting GA4 cookie from your site in their browser. They are classified as new users. 40 are recognized as returning users. Of those returning users, 10 visit your site 1x during the time period. 25 visit your site 2x during the time period. And 5 visit your site 3x during the time period.
So you have:
60 new users + 40 returning users = 100 users
And also:
60 sessions + 10 sessions + 50 sessions (25 x 2) + 15 sessions (5 x 3) = 135 sessions
Hope that helps!
Thank you!
You are most certainly welcome. Have a great one!
I liked the verse you sneaked in the end :)
: )
It was great
Hi! I'm very happy to see this video that explain all i need to find that "returning users"! Sorry i'm little bit stupid within this GA4 haha. Btw, why i can't see that "Totals" on the right table after returning users? Should i add another segment? Thanks a lot!
Glad you found this helpful. Thanks for watching and for taking the time to comment.
In terms of your question about "Totals," if you can let me know what the timestamp is in the video for me to look at, I can see if I can find an answer to your question. :)
Hi @@rooted-digital i mean "Totals" is on 1:15 on the very right side, after Returning Users
@@hanselbramantya8519 thanks for clarifying! So, I believe including that "Totals" column on the far right of your data table should be the default behavior when creating an Exploration. At least, it is on this end when I just tried re-creating this.
If you're not seeing it, I'd try a few things:
1.) Check to make sure the entire chart is in the screen. Sometimes, Google Analytics won't show everything on my screen and I need to use the horizontal scroll feature on the bottom of the screen to see all columns at far right. I bet this isn't it, but just in case. ; )
2.) Are you using "Event count" as your metric? I'd double check this. If not, I'd test using this.
3.) I'd go with your idea of adding additional segments. That doesn't seem to be needed on my end, but maybe it would "force" GA to do the right thing in your situation. : )
Good luck!
Hi @@rooted-digital i see...thanks for your answer. Maybe i will reply this comment again if i got confused about this GA4 settings. Thanks a lot!
Thanks so much for the video. Just created my segment of returning users....but is showing as ZERO? Anybody else have this issue?
Hello there. Thanks for the question and I'm sorry it's taken me a bit to reply. Audiences are not retroactive, which means they only begin populating after they've been created. Hopefully, you're seeing audience members in there now!
Thank you! This was so helpful. In the process of adding the comparisons after I chose "audience name" it had another dropdown that wasn't shown on yours - "Match Type" - where I had to choose between "exactly matches" or "does not exactly match." I chose "exactly matches" because I'm not sure what "does not exactly match" would mean. But if you have any insight I'm curious to know.
Glad you found it useful. : )
When you're adding those comparisons, you can think of "does not exactly match" as equivalent to "is not". In other words, if you wanted to add a comparison that showed a segment of your audience that excluded the audience you've built and selected, you would choose "does not exactly match".
Hope that makes sense. In your case, I think you're right on the money by making the selection you did. Thanks for watching!
@@rooted-digital Ohhh. I was really over thinking it. Thanks for clarifying.
You’re welcome
do you know is there a certain time frame when the user stopped being returning? For example after 100 days after the first visit on the website?
Good question. The _ga cookie is what Google Analytics uses to identify users and it will last for 2 years if it's not manually deleted from the browser.
policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en-US
great vid. Unfortunately I can't see what you put at 5:09
That filter is based on EVENT NAME and the filter "matches regex" for ^(page_view|internal_link_click)
A couple notes...
1.) I have set up a custom event called internal_link_click. If you don't have that set up (and want to), you can check out the article below to see what GA4 will track by default (external link clicks) and also how to set up a custom event for internal links.
www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-click-event/
2.) I believe the regex will also work without the caret (^) and parentheses
In other words this:
page_view|internal_link_click
The vertical pipe (|) means OR in regex, so you can list out whatever events you'd like to include here and separate them all with the pipe. Good luck with all your data collection and measurement and God bless.
Thanks for this video, it was super helpful. Is there a way of defining non-returning users? For us it would be really useful to see users who have registered and then not returned to the website within a certain period. Thanks :)
Hi Elishea, I am not 100% certain but I think a cohort analysis might be the way to get at the kind of data you're looking for.
I'm not sure how to do it with the existing audience buckets in GA4. For example, if you took something like Total Users and took away Returning Users over a given time frame you would have a bucket of users that included your non-returners...but it would also include all of your new users during that time frame. In other words, not helpful for your purposes.
Here's a link with more info on the cohort exploration. support.google.com/analytics/answer/9670133?hl=en#how-cohorts-work&zippy=%2Cin-this-article
Something I could learn more about for sure. Best of luck!
@@rooted-digital Hi, thanks so much for your reply. I've only just got back around to exploring this, it's something I still really need to do. Hopefully I'll figure out how to do it. If I discover anything new then I'll let you know. Thanks
I think I've figured it out... a user explorer report, comparing last 3 months to the previous 3 months. With just sessions and engaged sessions as the values. The only only problem is I see all users who started sessions, now I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can filter out the users who started a session in the previous period but did not start a session in this period just gone 🫠 @@rooted-digital
Great video! Thank you. Unfortunately my new users and returning users data (conversions) adds up to more than the all users data. Do you know why is this and how I can fix it? Thanks
Hello there. Where are you pulling in your data? Are you using an Exploration or a standard report? If you can share some more details (for example, what dimensions, metrics you're using in your Exploration and what specific report or reports you're using in standard reports along with dimensions), I can see if I can lend a perspective.
It's possible, the "issue" may be related to your date range. The same user can visit your website more than once during the time period of your analysis. That user could be a new user on their first visit and a returning user on a subsequent visit.
@@rooted-digital I'm using an exploration report. I created the audiences segments like instructed in your video, so new users is "first visit" , returning users is "session start excluding first visit" and all users is "session start". The value I am using is "conversions" Thanks for your help on this.
@@gemmalicious86, I just tried this in my own property and I think I'm seeing the same situation as you.
If I add up the event count / conversion count for "New Users" plus the "Returning Users", it's more than the total. Are you seeing that as well?
If so, I think it comes down to date range.
The same user can visit your site multiple times during a given date range. It’s possible a visitor could be both a new user and a returning user during a given time frame.
When I re-ran my Exploration using a much shorter time frame (for example, a single day), I DO then see that the numbers add up as they "should."
Not ideal. But hopefully helpful in interpreting the data. You would know your conversion count coming from your Returning Users is understated. That's because some of those Returning Users were also new visitors at one point during your analysis time frame, and later returned during the same time frame when they were classified as Returning users.
yes@@rooted-digital
I am getting loads of new customers and I really want to workout where they are coming from - but I can't trust the data on GA4 :(
Is the number of returning users shown here supposed to be the same number of returning users in the retention report for the same time period? Mine differs but I'm not sure why. Thanks!
Hi there, great question!
The short answer is:
- My numbers are different as well. And…
- I’m not 100% sure why.
I’ve been trying to do some research on this and haven’t yet found a satisfactory answer. The Google support article (support.google.com/analytics/answer/11004084?hl=en) includes that Retention report but doesn’t explain precisely how Returning users are calculated here.
Unfortunately, this is one of the frustrating parts of GA4 where numbers don’t always add up across different reporting areas because of how the event data is scoped and used.
I’m curious, are your numbers close or far apart? And which one is higher? I can compare to my own data and look into this more to see if I can figure anything out. 🙂
Thanks for the thoughtful question!
@@rooted-digital Thank you so much for the reply! Path exploration shows that I have 1.5k returning users, but the retention report only shows 1.2k. Is your number of returning users in path exploration also higher?
Maybe this is due to using the permanent vs temporary on your returning users exclusion
@@rooted-digital it's bc returning users can also be new users in the same time period
I've followed your steps but nothing is populating on the right. It's showing no data available even though I can see the data there when building the segments. Any tips?
If I understand correctly, your segments are showing data (session counts and users) in the preview screen (box on the far right) when you are building them. But then, when you try to populate your actual report data, you don't see anything at all. Do I have that right?
What dimension(s) and metric(s) are in your reports? And do you have any filters applied? And if you've followed along to replicate what's in this video, kindly refresh me on what timestamp I can go to see the setup you're going with. Not sure if I'll be able to answer, but I will do my best.
After waching your video. I'm figure the calculation formula is total = new + returning. Is this true?
Because in my report GA4, new user and returning user in my report are equal and when they plus, they do not equal with total?
Is there any function i had to add on? ;-;
Hello there. Thanks for the question. GA4 definitely does not make this easy to understand. I had put together this grid in the attached PDF to help myself keep tabs on how GA4 is calculating these various groups of users. You can check it out here if you're interested. I'd recommend thinking about things in terms of how GA4 is calculating the various groups, since that may help things make a bit more sense. At least, that is what helped me a bit.
www.rootandbranchgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/GA4-Users-Grid-Root-and-Branch.pdf
It's embedded on this article page here:
www.rootandbranchgroup.com/ga4-users-defined/
Best wishes to you.
Wow thanks you a lot@@rooted-digital
You're very welcome. Good luck and Godspeed to you on the measurement and analytics journey!
A helpful video... but it would have been so much more helpful if you started from scratch and built the whole thing. There were several steps that you skipped over which I had to discover by looking at screenshots, without any explanation.
Thanks for watching and thanks especially for the helpful feedback.
I often like to try and show what the "finished product" looks like up front so people know which direction we're headed. In this case, you're right that I glossed over a lot of the important clicks and steps along the way. Thanks for sticking with it and my thanks again for taking the time to share this.
Best wishes!
I don't see first_visit anymore] so I used the first_open instead. I hope it works.
Hi Asher, do you have a website or an app that you're tracking? I just looked again in my GA4 property for my website and only see first_visit. The first_open parameter would be for an app.
Then again, GA4 has certainly been known to do weird things in the past. Hope all works for you.