Pathfinder: Find the paths your users take on their way to conversion

Amplitude is merging this chart into the new Journeys experience. This article remains live as long as legacy Pathfinder charts remain accessible. Learn about the new Journeys experience here.

Amplitude's Pathfinder chart lets you explore aggregated user flows in your product.

Pathfinder shows all the events (also called nodes) users fire in your product, and the sequences of those events (also called paths) users take during a specified time, measured by event totals. You can view both outgoing and incoming paths to a specified event, and Pathfinder shows paths up to fifty steps deep.

Amplitude recommends using Pathfinder to find the top common paths users can take to conversion, then using this information to build out your funnel chart.

Before you begin

Read the article on building charts in Amplitude.

Read session IDs and how Amplitude tracks sessions.

Pathfinder tracks all paths in individual sessions. If you send Amplitude events through the HTTP API or another pipeline, you must send a session_id with the event. Otherwise, your product's path views aren't accurate.

Set up your Pathfinder chart

To build your own Pathfinder chart, follow these steps:

In the Events Module, decide whether you want your path to start with a specific event or end with one:
- To view the actions or events users take after a given event, select starting with from the Paths within sessions dropdown menu.
- To view the events users take before a given event, select ending with from the Paths within sessions dropdown menu.
Select the starting (or ending) event. Unlike many other Amplitude charts, Pathfinder requires a specific event instrumented in Amplitude. Pathfinder doesn't support Any Event.
To add properties to your starting event, click + Filter by, select the property name, and specify the property value you're interested in.
To narrow the focus of your Pathfinder chart results:
- Filter by sessions that include a specific event, or a specific event/property pairing.
- Break out your results by the properties of a specific event.
- Exclude certain events by specific property values (for example, exclude page viewed where page = [x], [y], or [z]).
With each option, Amplitude takes that event and applies a group-by condition based on the property values you selected. In this example, the Pathfinder chart displays results broken out by values for the country property of the Search Song or Video event.
In the Segment By Module, identify the user segment to include in this analysis. To import a previously saved segment, click Saved and select the one you want from the list. Otherwise, Amplitude targets all users by default.
To build your own user segment instead, add properties. Click + Filter by, choose the property to include, and specify the property value you're interested in.
To narrow the focus further to users who already performed certain actions, click + Performed, then choose the event you're interested in.
In the chart module, set your preferred Bucket below threshold. This threshold sets a lower boundary for node visibility in your chart. If the percentage of users who took a particular path is lower than the threshold, Amplitude doesn't display that path. Amplitude collapses any nodes that fall below the threshold into a single node labeled Other.
To exclude specific active events from your Pathfinder chart, select Hide Noisy Events from the Filter Events dropdown. You can remove specific noisy events from the chart entirely, or collapse repeated, consecutive steps into a single node.
You can also unhide inactive events (hidden by default) from Hide Noisy Events. To include specific events, select Only Show Specific Events from the same dropdown menu.
To adjust the number of steps in your Pathfinder chart, click the + button next to Steps. Your chart can include from five to fifty steps.
Use the date picker to specify the timezone and set the timeframe of your analysis. Your analysis can span a maximum of 45 days.
To save the Pathfinder chart, click Save. The Save modal opens. Fill in the necessary information and click Save.

Interpret your Pathfinder chart

Pathfinder shows how users use your product by showing all the paths that start with or end with a specific event during a time period. Pathfinder orders events by the event_time timestamp with millisecond resolution.

Your Pathfinder chart includes two separate visualizations: the sankey flow diagram toward the bottom, and the funnel toward the top.

The flow diagram

After you select an event to begin or end your paths, Amplitude generates all event node paths (up to 15) that meet the following conditions:

Either the event node is an [Amplitude] Start Session, or
The percentage of users in the node is greater than or equal to the zoom threshold.

The sankey diagram (the flow diagram) shows all the paths starting or ending with a specific event. Each step has a label. The label shows the event fired at that step in the sequence, plus the frequency that event fired at that stage.

For example, in the sequence below (Start Session --> Main Landing Screen --> Step 3), 17.61% of events at Step 3 in the sequence were 'Edit Profile'.

Each step in the sequence has a unique color. The colored pathways show the flow of events between two nodes. To measure the total number of conversions through a selected sequence, use the funnel visualization at the top.

If you click a node, Pathfinder highlights paths leading into and out of that node. The black section of a node represents all paths where the next event was [Amplitude] End Session. The Other node is the aggregate of nodes that fall below the threshold you set. To see more nodes, lower the threshold.

Amplitude orders events by client_event_time.

The funnel diagram

Above the flow diagram, a funnel measures the total number of times a selected sequence of events has completed. Unlike a traditional Funnels chart, this funnel measures total sequences rather than unique users.

To construct a sequence, select events from the flow diagram. As you do, Amplitude calculates the conversion rate for the funnel.

The conversion rate shows the percentage of all sequences mirroring that specific path. In the example above, 17.6% of all sequences were Start Session → Main Landing Screen → Edit Profile.

You can use the Microscope to create a behavioral cohort, or download the list of users as a .CSV file.

Because the funnel query shows total conversion and doesn't count unique conversions like a typical Funnel chart, users can appear in both the converted and dropped-off segments. Since users can count as both converted and not converted, these cohorts are more useful for learning about specific users than for targeting them in product experiences.

View custom events

You can view custom events in Pathfinder with the following caveats:

By default, the top 50 most queried custom events are available when you create a new Pathfinder, toggled to off. You can remove some of the default custom events and add more, but only 50 are available.
Custom events aren't available in the Hide Noisy Events and Only Show Specific Events settings.
You can't collapse repeated events when custom events are enabled.
To see the breakdown of events in a custom event, click the custom event in the visual.

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