Been using basic month-over-month growth tracking for our app.
Switched to cohort-adjusted growth rates last quarter and the numbers tell a completely different story about where we’re actually heading.
Anyone else had their assumptions completely flipped by changing how they calculate growth?
Same thing happened with a food delivery app I worked on. We were celebrating 20% user growth until we split it by acquisition channel.
Turns out our paid social users had terrible week 2 retention compared to organic referrals. The blended growth number hid that we were basically buying users who’d churn fast.
Started tracking growth separately for each channel and realized our ‘winning’ Facebook campaign was actually burning money. Shifted budget to what brought quality users instead of just volume.
Revenue cohorts provide a better insight than just user cohorts. We believed we had 15% monthly growth. When we began tracking revenue per cohort, we realized our early users were much more valuable than new ones. After considering the revenue decline per cohort, our growth looked flat. Now, we monitor both user acquisition and revenue per user from day one, not only downloads.
Tracking active users versus total installs was my wake-up call. I thought we were doing great, but most people downloaded and then ghosted us.
Now I keep an eye on weekly actives and onboarding completion rates. Our actual growth rate got cut in half, but now I know which campaigns really bring users who stay.
Cohort analysis can change everything. It gives a clearer view of retention rates and user behavior.
Vanity metrics killed my first app. Real cohorts saved the second.