Visitors by number of monthly visits, over time

[emiliog]

Hello, I'm trying to create a report that looks, over time, how many unique visitors had a specific minimum amount of visits every month.

So let's say I wanted to know how many unique visitors paid at least 5 visits a month, for a 12 month period.

If I choose the time range for a specific month only, the real number comes out.

Also, if I use a segment with "last month" "2 months ago" and "3 months ago" (and visits equal or greater than 5) in Analytics Workspace, the right numbers come through just fine.

But when I create a segment specific for each month of the year, or just break it down by month, the number of unique visitors just mushrooms, since it's pulling the aggregate.

Ideally, the way to do this is to expand the "3 months ago" category, but there is nothing automatic about that. Any suggestions?

[PratheepArunRaj]

Dear Emiliog,

How about creating sequential segment like below for 12 instances? Will that work?

Thank You

Arun

[emiliog]

Thanks for the reply, but this would give unique visitors who have been active in successive months, since you have the then function. And given that usage fluctuates, some users may have been active at least 5 times every month, but many may have just paid a visit every other month during the time period, or just once during the time period.

By doing the segment, you get people who have been consistently visiting the site month in and month out, but I just wanted on a monthly basis.

[Pablo_Childe]

I then recommend you look at Traffic or Numeric Classifications.

Traffic Classifications

it may be the way you set groups of volume levels to report on the different tiers of data you want.

GLTU

[PratheepArunRaj]

Dear Emiliog,

Got it. I am not sure whether we can do this since we only have 'last month', '2 months ago' & '3 months ago' and not 'Month' in generic.

Let's wait for others to revert.

Thank You

Arun

[Pablo_Childe]

Here is a couple other ideas...

If you want to just tier visitors 15 + a month, by trended month then pick report(like key metrics) run for last 6 months. Use tier segment and it should only show those visits per month by tier.

Also:

What if you make custom visitor segments based on back dated time frames and visitor levels...

This is an example of 4 months ago visitors that were at least visiting 15 times. it makes an assumption of 30 days per month but you could adjust for longer shorter months as needed.

[Gigazelle]

Hi Emilio, were you able to get the segment working?

[Pablo_Childe]

What if you looked at the return frequency report. It has several tiers close to what you want and you can run it monthly and specify metrics UVs or Visits etc...

[emiliog]

Thanks for the reply. Return Frequency wouldn't really work, since it tells you when it was the last time they visited, but not how often during a specific period of time.

If I wanted to segment it to those who came at least 15 times a month, segregated by month, it wouldn't really help.

[Gigazelle]

I'm afraid there isn't an automatic way to accomplish this. If you're looking at a 12-month period, you can create a segment where visits are greater than or equal to 60 (since 12x5=60).

You'd want to adjust the 60 threshold based on your date range, though. There currently isn't a way to dynamically adjust a value based on selected date.

[Urs_Boller]

Maybe do not try to figure out, what visitors to INclude, rather search visitors to EXclude. but you need to create 12 segments based on 12 custom date ranges...

preparation: date ranges and segments for month in the past

1. create a custom date range (if not already available) for every month in the past
2. create a corresponding "hit" segment with just the date range in it

final segment

the segment would look like this:

visitors (exclude) where

  - visitor container: (segment "last month") visits less than 5 or

  - visitor container: (segment "2 month ago") visits less than 5 or

  - ...

what it does: you search for any visitors who had not 5 visits in one of the last 12 months. and finally exclude all the found visitors...

attention: be aware that using date ranges affect the results! even if the final visitors had hits outside the last 12 month, they will not be shown. the reason is somewhere in the backend that the segment only returns hits for the dateranges you use in the segment ... sounds strange, but it "works as designed"

[Urs_Boller]

and here are 2 links which might be of help:

- youtube video on how to create date ranges: Rolling Date Ranges in Segments - YouTube

- Adam Greco wrote a blog about another (slightly different) question and used a bunch of segments with date ranges. see how he did it: https://analyticsdemystified.com/adobe-analytics/visitor-retention-adobe-analytics-workspace/