Lifecycle provides a breakdown of your active users by new, current, and resurrected (previously dormant) users. These three groups make up your total active users at any given time. The Lifecycle chart also provides a count of dormant (inactive) users. This granular view provides more insights to analyze user growth over time. The growth of your current and resurrected user base leads to sustainable growth.
What You Will Learn in This Article
This article will provide definitions of terms used in the Lifecycle chart, explain how to set up a chart, and explain the different options of analysis available.
Prerequisites
Before you start reading this article, we recommend that you have a look at the prerequisites list below. The information presented in this list will help you out with both useful information and good to know practices but will also contain links to related topics and Help Center articles:
- This feature was formerly known as Growth Accounting
- Helpful: Understand your product’s critical event and its usage frequency
- Helpful: The Retention Lifecycle Framework: A Process for Improving User Retention
Table of Contents
User Definitions
| User Type | Definition |
|---|---|
| Active User | A user who logged any active event. Read about non-active events, here. |
| New User |
An active user who logged any event for the first time. A user will be counted as new for one full interval after their first event is received by Amplitude. For example, if your usage interval is set to 7 days, and a user was new on January 1st, they will be considered new for any events they perform between January 1 - January 7. *Note: Selecting an event other than "any event" does not change the definitions for new user, but we will also check the previous window when determining if a user should be considered new when they do perform the selected event. Lifecycle is more inclusive about considering a user new (they could be new in the previous month and just not have done the event) |
| Current User | An active user who was active in the previous time period (day, week, or month). For example, a user who was active on January 1st and January 2nd would be considered a current user on January 2nd for a daily lifecycle chart. |
| Resurrected User | An active user who was not active for the previous interval (day, week, or month), or longer. For example, a user who was not active on January 1st, but performed an event on January 2nd would be considered a resurrected user on January 2nd for a daily lifecycle chart. |
| Dormant User |
A user who did not log any active event but was active in the previous time period (day, week, or month). For example, a user who was active on January 1st but not active on January 2nd would be considered a dormant user on January 2nd. |
Chart Control Panel
Left Module
The left module of the chart control panel allows you to pick and choose what event you want to focus on in your Lifecycle chart. The default selection is '[Amplitude] Any Event', which will bucket users based on any event they have fired. You can select between other '[Amplitude]' events or any other event you have instrumented.
Right Module
Narrow the focus to specific user populations by segmenting the data by user properties or cohorts by using the right module. You can click on the "Users" dropdown to utilize our account-level reporting feature or use the "+where" clause to segment your users.
Usage Interval
In the bottom module of the chart control panel, you can change the usage interval defined for your chart. A usage interval is the amount of time that you’d like to break down activity by. This usage interval can be measured in days, calendar weeks, or calendar months. Additionally, you can customize the number of days, calendar weeks, or calendar months a user has to use your product more than once in order to be marked as current and not dormant. So, instead of selecting between daily, weekly, or monthly intervals in the date picker like in other Amplitude charts, you are selecting your own custom interval. The usage interval is also the amount of time that the user has to perform your selected event in order to be marked as current and not dormant.
For the example below, if the usage interval is set to five days, then the Lifecycle chart will display the data in five-day intervals. This means that a user must return to your app and trigger the selected event within five days of their last active event to be considered current and not dormant. If the user does not return by day 5, they are marked dormant between the current interval and the next interval. If they were to return later on the seventh day, they would also be counted as resurrected for that next time interval.
Growth
The Growth chart shows the distribution of active users (new, current, and resurrected) and the count of dormant users for a particular day, week, or month. This allows you to understand which group of users impacts your active user counts the most.
This chart is available by clicking "..shown as Growth / Dormant / Pulse".
Dormant
The Dormant chart shows the distribution of dormant users (new, current, and resurrected) for a particular day, week, or month. For example, a dormant new user on August 10th (shown in the bar between August 9th and August 10th) is a user who was new on August 9th but became dormant on August 10th.
This chart is available by clicking "..shown as Growth / Dormant / Pulse".
Pulse
The Pulse chart shows the ratio of incoming users (e.g. new and resurrected users) versus outgoing users (e.g. dormant users) for a particular day, week, or month. The ratio allows you to understand how many active users you gain for each user that becomes dormant.
Specifically, Pulse uses the following formula:
(# of new users + # of resurrected users) / (# of dormant users)
At a high level:
- Pulse > 1 indicates that you are gaining more users than losing them, which means your product is experiencing growth.
- Pulse < 1 indicates you are losing more users than gaining them, which means your product isn't growing.
For example, in the chart below, we had a pulse of 0.78 on August 9th. This means that we lost more users on August 9th than we gained or resurrected.
This chart is available by clicking "..shown as Growth / Dormant / Pulse".
Breakdown
Below the chart is a table of Lifecycle data. You can export the data table as a CSV file by clicking the "Export CSV" button.
Video Walkthrough