What are new users?

New users is the count of people whose very first activity in your product happened during the period you're looking at.

First ever, not first this month. Someone who signed up last year and came back yesterday is an active user, not a new one. Each person can only be new once.

Why the "first ever" part matters

It stops the same person being counted as new again and again.

Plenty of tools count a first session in the window, which means a returning user with a cleared browser looks like a fresh signup. Your growth chart then measures browser behaviour instead of demand.

Meterio anchors each user to a single first-seen moment. If they had visits before they identified themselves, the anchor moves back to the earliest of those visits, so your acquisition date is when they really arrived.

What the number is good for

New users measures the top of your funnel and nothing else.

It answers whether people are finding you. It says nothing about whether they stay, which is why a rising new user count next to a rising churn rate means you're refilling a bucket with a hole in it.

Your dashboard also shows weekly growth, which compares new users in the last seven days against the seven days before that. That comparison is what Meterio uses to tell growth from a flat line, and above 10% week over week it starts treating your product as spreading rather than just holding steady.

What good looks like

There is no target number, because ten users a week from a cold start is a different achievement to ten users a week after a launch.

Watch the shape instead of the level:

• Flat. Whatever brought people in has stopped working. One channel probably did all the work and has run dry.
• Spiky. A launch, a post, a mention. Real, but it isn't a channel until it repeats without you pushing.
• Steadily up. Something is compounding. Find out what it is before you spend money on anything else.

Weeks with fewer than about ten new users will look random. Don't read a story into that movement.

How to improve it

Ask new users where they came from, in the product, in the first session. Analytics can tell you the referring page but not the conversation that led to it, and early on the conversation is the channel.

Pick one source and go deeper before adding a second. Two half-worked channels usually produce less than one worked properly.

Fix the leak first if you have one. Getting repeat rate up before you buy traffic means every new user you add is worth more.