Introducing The Amplitude Quickstart Series

I’ve spent nearly 20 years in analytics. I’ve been an in-house practitioner, a vendor, a product manager, a consultant, and an educator. Across all of those roles, one thing has stayed consistent: the number one reason people struggle with a new analytics tool is that they don’t know where to start.

Not because the tool is bad. Not because they’re not smart enough. But because there’s a gap between signing up and actually feeling confident enough to build something useful. That gap is where most people stall out, and it’s the gap I wanted to close.

That’s why I built The Amplitude Quickstart Series.

What the series is (and why it exists)

The Amplitude Quickstart Series is a collection of 15 short, focused video episodes designed to take you from “I just signed up” to “I know how to use this.” Each video is built around a specific task or concept, with hands-on demos so you can follow along in your own Amplitude instance. No fluff, no theory-heavy lectures. Just practical, visual walkthroughs of the things you actually need to do.

I wanted to build something that felt like sitting down with a colleague who already knows the tool and is happy to walk you through it. That’s the energy of these videos. They’re conversational, they’re specific, and they’re designed to get you building real analyses as quickly as possible.

The series covers everything from understanding what Amplitude is and who it’s for, to the data foundations that power the platform, to deep hands-on demos of the reporting and analysis tools you’ll use every day. And it goes further than just analytics, with episodes on Session Replay, Guides and Surveys, Web Experimentation, and the AI Agents that are changing how people interact with their data.

A few episodes worth highlighting

While every episode is designed to stand on its own (you can jump to whatever's most relevant to you), there are a few I want to call out specifically.

Episode 1: Meet the Amplitude AI Analytics Platform

This is the starting point. If you’re brand new to Amplitude, or if you’ve been using it casually and want to understand the full scope of what’s available, this is where to begin. I walk through the core product areas: Analytics, Experimentation, Session Replay, Guides and Surveys, and more. The goal is to give you a mental map of what Amplitude can do so that when you’re ready to dig in, you know which direction to go. It’s a quick watch, and it sets the stage for everything that follows.

Episode 4: How to Collect Amplitude Data with Google Tag Manager

This one is close to my heart, and I think it’s going to be one of the most useful episodes for a lot of people. If you’re already running Google Tag Manager on your site (and chances are good that you are), you likely have a solid foundation of triggers and variables already configured for things like GA4. The Amplitude GTM tag template lets you take that existing groundwork and apply it to Amplitude. You’re not starting from scratch. You’re building on what you’ve already done.

I walk through the full setup, start to finish: installing the Amplitude 2.0 SDK tag template in GTM, mapping your existing triggers and variables, and getting data flowing into Amplitude. For anyone who’s been hesitant about the implementation side, this episode is specifically designed to show you how approachable it really is. If you can set up a tag in GTM (and you probably already have), you can set up Amplitude.

Episode 15: How to Answer Analytics Questions with AI Agents

This is the episode I’m probably most excited about. Amplitude’s Global Agent is the core of what makes this an AI Analytics Platform, and seeing it in action tends to change how people think about what an analytics tool can be. You can ask a question in plain language, anywhere in Amplitude (or even in Slack or Teams), and get an answer backed by your actual data.

I demo several scenarios in this episode, from simple questions to more complex multi-step analyses. The thing that makes it compelling isn’t just that it works. It’s that it removes the barrier between having a question and getting an answer. You don’t need to know which chart type to use or how to configure a filter. You just ask, and the agent builds the analysis for you. For analysts, it’s a time saver. For everyone else on the team, it’s access to insights they might never have asked for because they didn’t know how to pull them.

What else the series covers

Beyond those three, the series goes deep on the topics you’ll encounter as you start building analyses and using the platform day to day.

There are episodes on Amplitude’s data foundations, where I walk through the terminology and data model so you know what to expect when you start exploring (especially helpful if you’re coming from another analytics platform and the language is slightly different). There’s an episode on navigating the Amplitude UI, so you can orient yourself and know where everything lives. And then a whole section of reporting episodes that cover chart types, onsite behavior tracking, conversion funnels, and user journey analysis with pathfinder.

On the platform side, I cover data governance (one of Amplitude’s real strengths, and something that’s often new to people coming from other tools), Session Replay for bridging quantitative and qualitative data, Guides and Surveys for in-app engagement, and Web Experimentation for running A/B tests using your Amplitude data. There’s also an episode on the Specialized Agents, which can monitor session replays, analyze dashboards, and recommend conversion optimizations on your behalf.

Here’s the full lineup:

1. Meet the Amplitude Analytics Platform
2. Who is Amplitude For?
3. How Does Amplitude Deal with Data?
4. How to Collect Amplitude Data with Google Tag Manager
5. Learn the Amplitude UI
6. Chart Types in Amplitude
7. What Are Users Doing on My Site?
8. How to Build Conversion Funnels
9. What Journeys Are My Users Taking?
10. How to Keep Data Clean
11. How to Watch User Activity with Session Replay
12. How to Engage In-App with Guides and Surveys
13. How to Run A/B Tests with Web Experimentation
14. How to Automate Analytics with AI Agents
15. How to Answer Analytics Questions with AI Agents

Who this is for

If you just signed up for Amplitude and want a guided path through the platform, start at Episode 1 and work your way through. If you’ve been using Amplitude for a while but want to go deeper on a specific feature (or if you didn’t know Session Replay or Web Experimentation existed), jump to whichever episode is most relevant. And if you’re evaluating analytics tools and want to see what Amplitude looks like in practice, with real demos and real workflows, this series will give you a much better sense of the platform than any feature comparison chart.

I also built this with teams in mind. If you’re the analytics lead at your company and you’ve been trying to get your product managers or marketers to self-serve in Amplitude, send them a few of these. That’s a much more effective onboarding path than a slide deck or a help doc link.

This is just the beginning

These 15 episodes are the first batch. I’m already planning additional videos that will go deeper on topics like attribution, acquisition reporting, and more advanced use cases as the platform continues to evolve. If there’s something you’d like to see covered, I genuinely want to hear about it.

You can find the full Amplitude Quickstart Series on our YouTube channel, and we’ll be rolling out individual episodes across our social channels over the coming weeks so you can catch them wherever you spend your time.

I’ve been building educational analytics content for a long time. This series is the thing I wish had existed every time I started learning a new tool. I hope it makes your Amplitude journey feel a little less intimidating and a lot more doable.