What is cohort analysis?

Cohort analysis groups customers by something they share, most often the month of their first order, and follows how each group buys over the months that follow.

How it works for a WooCommerce store

The usual output is a table. Each row is a cohort (customers who first bought in January, February and so on). Each column is months since that first order. Each cell shows how many of the cohort ordered again in that month, or how much they spent.

WooCommerce has no cohort report. To build one you need every order with a customer identifier and a date, which means exporting orders (or using SQL against the Analytics lookup tables, such as wc_order_stats and wc_customer_lookup), then grouping in a spreadsheet. The Customers report (WooCommerce › Customers) shows sign-up date and order counts, which is enough for rough checks but not a full cohort table.

A worked example

Say 200 customers made a first order in March, and 180 did in April.

April's customers are coming back more often. If you changed something in April, such as a follow-up email or a new product, that's a lead worth checking.

Why it matters

Averages blend old and new customers together and hide change. Cohorts show whether customers you win today stick around better or worse than last year's. They're the honest way to measure repeat purchase rate and customer lifetime value over time. Askshelf doesn't do cohort analysis. The WooCommerce customer analytics guide covers what you can get, and first-purchase analysis is a related way to see which products bring people back.