Return Frequency CJA | Community
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5 replies

pradnya_balvir
New Participant
Jul 3, 2025 10:41 AM UTC

Hi @joseph_making , 

In AA, Return Frequency is typically:

  • Number of Visits / Unique Visitors

  • Or based on buckets like:

    • First-time

    • 2–3 times

    • 4–9 times

    •  
    • 10+ times

In CJA, you need to build that logic yourself, based on visits per person.

 

Use a Derived Field for Return Frequency Buckets (Recommended)

 

  • Go to Data Views in CJA.

  • Create a New Derived Field on the Person ID / Visitor ID level.

CASE
WHEN Visit Count = 1 THEN "1 visit"
WHEN Visit Count BETWEEN 2 AND 3 THEN "2-3 visits"
WHEN Visit Count BETWEEN 4 AND 9 THEN "4-9 visits"
ELSE "10+ visits"
END

 

 

  • Metric: Visits

  • Aggregation: Count

  • Container: Person (so it counts total visits per person)

  • This gives you a dimension that you can drop into tables, visualizations, etc.

 

 

Or Create a Calculated Metric for Returners vs. First-Timers

If you just want to know who returned, you could create a calculated metric like:

 

Return Visits = Visits where Visit Number > 1
Return Rate = Return Visits / Unique Visitors

 

But you’ll still want a dimension to categorize users by frequency if you're doing segmentation or cohorting.

You can also use CJA’s Cohort Analysis to see how users return over days/weeks/months after first visit.

 

Thanks.

Pradnya

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Level 5
Aug 19, 2025 7:19 PM UTC

Return Frequency shows the shows the time between visits for returning visitors. The derived field approach you mentioned is more of a bucketed approach to a Visit Number dimension. I think that a Return Frequency approach using derived fields will need to use the new Date Math function.

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Vinay_Chauhan
New Participant
Jul 1, 2025 9:41 PM UTC

Hi @joseph_making 

Return frequency isn’t directly available in CJA like in traditional Adobe Analytics, but you can definitely build something similar using calculated metrics and a bit of logic.

One option is to create a calculated metric or segment-based approach using visit numbers. If your dataset includes Visit Number, you can group users into return frequency buckets like -

  • 1st time (Visit Number = 1)

  • Returning (Visit Number = 2–5)

  • Frequent (Visit Number > 5)

You could build segments for each group and use them in your reports.

If you’re trying to show the time between visits, another way is to use timestamp differences between visits at the Person ID level (if you have access to timestamps in your schema).

You could calculate the difference between two visit start times and create a metric or export the data for deeper logic in a tool like Data Prep or a BI tool.

Hope that helps! 

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Level 2
Jul 2, 2025 8:48 AM UTC

Hi @joseph_making I think either you can go with the above solution using the visit number as segment or use this 2nd option directly you can use this option which need to be implemented using adobe launch.

Option 2: Visit Duration Tracking
Use the getVisitDuration data element to track engagement patterns within visits. This data element tracks the amount of time in minutes that the visitor has been on the site up to that point during their current visit.

Important :  this data element sets cookies. Please refer to the plug-in specific documentation for more information.
Documentation: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-platform/tags/extensions/client/web-sdk/web-sdk-plugins#getVisitDuration 

The getVisitDuration data element doesn't use any arguments and returns:

  • "first hit of visit"
  • "less than a minute"
  • "1 minute"

"[x] minutes" (where [x] is the number of minutes passed since the visitor landed on the site) and then later in CJA you can bucket this data based on requiremnt.

Thanks,
Mohit

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FarazHusain
Employee
Jul 1, 2025 7:57 PM UTC

In AA, this dimension used to work out-of-the-box and it seems functionality isn't much exposed to mimic the same. In general, it checks how long ago the previous visit was, and buckets the hit in the appropriate dimension item.

 

An alternative that I can think of in CJA is to use Cohorts -

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics-platform/using/cja-workspace/visualizations/cohort-table/cohort-analysis 

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