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Create a heatmap

Before you create a heatmap, confirm that your Amplitude instrumentation meets the prerequisites, then follow the steps to build and target your first heatmap.

Prerequisites

Your Amplitude instrumentation must meet the following requirements.

Session Replay

Client availability

Heatmaps supports web-based session replays only, and doesn't support mobile apps or SDKs.

Heatmaps requires these minimum SDK versions:

Session Replay sample rate

Heatmaps use Session Replay data to track interactions on your pages. If you use a sample rate to limit the number of replays you generate, you also limit the events available to build heatmaps. A limited sample rate produces a less comprehensive view of user interactions and can reduce heatmap accuracy.

Heatmap data requirements

Heatmaps appear after Amplitude collects enough replay click data across your site: at least 10 separate pages, with about 500 tracked replay clicks on each page. These thresholds are approximate and may change as Heatmaps evolves.

No server-side identifiers

Heatmaps requires Amplitude's default device identifiers from the Browser SDK and doesn't support device identifiers from server-side SDKs or third-party data sources.

Create a development project (optional)

Amplitude recommends that you create a separate development project to test Heatmapping without impacting your production environment.

Event taxonomy impact

Heatmap and Session Replay events don't count toward your allotted event volume, and Amplitude doesn't bill you for them.

Create a heatmap

To create a new Heatmap:

  1. Navigate to Heatmaps in the left navigation in Amplitude.
  2. Click + New Heatmap.
  3. Choose a Heatmap type. You can update the map type at any point.
  4. Select the URL to analyze. Use the following URL matching options to target the pages you care about.
    • Exact match: Matches the URL exactly as you specify it. Ideal for single URLs. For example, https://amplitude.com.
    • Pattern match: Uses wildcards to match more than one URL with a similar pattern. Useful for targeting dynamic paths. For example, https://amplistore/products/* matches /products/shoes and /product/accessories.
    • Contains: Matches URLs that contain a specific keyword or segment anywhere in the URL. Useful for common themes. For example, /search?q= matches the search results page for any user query.
    • Starts with: Matches all URLs that begin with a specific prefix. Useful for capturing sections of a site. For example, https://amplitude.com/blog captures the /blog page and all subpages.
  5. Select or create a Segment using user properties or cohorts to narrow the focus to a specific set of users.
  6. Optionally, select different device types to understand how users interact on devices of different widths.
  7. Choose a background for your heatmap. Backgrounds are snapshots of a session replay and represent the page's state during replay collection. Each heatmap generates eight backgrounds. Amplitude selects each background from the page state that generates the most actions during a session.

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