Frequency

Frequency is how many times a user returned to the site within a period; it is one of the three dimensions of the classic RFM model, alongside recency and value.

Frequency goes beyond a total visit count and asks how many times the same user came, because the difference between someone who drops by monthly and someone who returns daily reveals the root of loyalty. On its own this dimension means little and is always paired with recency: a user who was frequent but has not come for a while is at risk of churn, while one who is both frequent and recent is the loyal core of the audience. A common trap is reading average frequency instead of its distribution; an average of two visits can come from a mass of one-time users plus a highly frequent minority, and the right decision hinges on that frequent tail, not the average. Frequency equals sessions per user when averaged over the whole audience, but as a segmentation dimension its value is in splitting groups, not in a single figure.