Impact Analysis: How engagement changes user behavior

With Amplitude's Impact Analysis chart, you can discover how first-time engagement with one feature affects the rate of another behavior.

For example, a product manager of a music app can use Impact Analysis to see changes in the average number of times users play a song after they first discover the ability to favorite songs.

Use the Impact Analysis chart to:

• Learn whether discovering a feature for the first time changes how often users take another specific action.
• Determine whether users who interacted with a new or changed feature take certain actions more frequently, relative to the time before they first used the new feature.

Before you begin

Events don't appear in any Amplitude charts until instrumentation is complete. Make sure you've completed instrumentation. To learn the basics, refer to building charts in Amplitude.

When working with an Impact Analysis chart, remember that correlation doesn't imply causation.

Set up an Impact Analysis chart

To build an Impact Analysis chart, follow these steps:

1. In the Events Module, select a treatment event. This is a user action that you believe might affect your users' propensity to take a key action within your product. Select up to three treatment events.
2. Select the outcome event. This is the behavior you think might have changed after users triggered the treatment event for the first time. Select up to three outcome events.
3. To add properties to your events, click + where, select the property name, and specify the property value you want.
4. In the Segmentation Module, identify the user segment to include in this analysis. To import a saved segment, click Saved Segments and select the one you want from the list. Otherwise, Amplitude assumes the analysis targets all users.
5. To build your own segment, add properties. Click + where, choose the property you want to include, and specify the property value you want.
6. To narrow your focus, include only users who have already performed certain actions. Click + perform, then choose the event you want.
7. Use the date picker to specify the timezone, interval, and timeframe for your analysis. This sets the window of time during which Amplitude finds all users who triggered the treatment event for the first time.

Here, "first time" means the first time the user triggered the treatment event in the number of calendar days before the beginning of the selected date range. This number depends on the time interval you choose:

• Daily: 90 calendar days
• Weekly: 91 calendar days (or 13 weeks)
• Monthly: 120 calendar days (or 4 months)
• Quarterly: 360 calendar days (or 4 quarters)

For example, if you set the timeframe between 10/15/2022 and 11/18/2022 with a weekly interval, the results include all users who triggered the treatment event during that time and who had not previously done so at any point between 7/17/2022 and 10/15/2022 (91 calendar days before the beginning of the selected time window).

To learn how to interpret your Impact Analysis chart, refer to interpret your Impact Analysis chart.