User Retention Analysis

User retention analysis measures how well a product keeps users coming back over time. Instead of focusing only on new users, businesses want to understand whether users continue to engage after signing up. High retention indicates that users find value in the product, while low retention may signal issues with user experience or product fit.

Retention is typically analyzed by comparing when a user signed up with when they return to use the product. This is often done using session or event data, where repeated activity over time indicates continued engagement.

For beginners, the goal is to:

• Understand what retention means in a product context
• Identify returning users using session or event data
• Compare first activity with later activity
• Learn how to measure simple retention patterns

• Which users return after their first session
• How many users are active more than once
• Whether users continue engaging over time
• Basic indicators of product stickiness

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The Basic Pattern

SELECT column_name
FROM table_name;
  

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Examples

Example 1 — Identify Users Who Returned More Than Once

Example 2 — Count Total Active Users

Example 3 — Find Users Active After a Specific Date

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Practice Tasks (Your Turn!)

Task 1

Find users who had exactly one session.

Task 2

Count the number of sessions for each day.

Task 3

Find the number of unique users per traffic source.