Zoning Insights

Zoning Insights lets you define named areas (zones) on your pages and analyze user engagement within those areas. Create overlays on your product UI that reveal how users interact with specific regions, such as hero sections, navigation bars, or call-to-action blocks.

Zoning Insights requires auto-captured interaction data (for example, click exposures, or scrolls) to compute element-level metrics. Because Zoning Insights uses autocapture to collect page-level click events and interaction data, it can increase event volumes.

Permissions

• If you have an Admin or Manager role, you can create, update, and delete any zoning analysis.
• If you have the Member role, you can create, update, or delete your own zoning analyses but can't edit anyone else's.
• If you have the Viewer role, you can only view zoning analyses. For details, go to User roles and permissions.

Availability

You can use Zoning Insights on Web and Mobile Web.

How Zoning Insights relates to Session Replay and Heatmaps

Zoning Insights is different than either Session Replay or Heatmaps:

• Session Replay: Records user sessions and lets you watch replays and debug behavior.
• Heatmaps: Aggregates clicks, scrolls, and selector-level interactions on a page without defining custom areas.
• Zoning Insights: Defines custom areas (zones) on a page and analyzes engagement within those areas. Zoning Insights complements Session Replay and Heatmaps when you care about specific regions (for example: banners, forms, or CTAs) rather than the whole page or raw selectors.

Configure Zoning Insights

For full setup instructions across Browser SDK, Google Tag Manager, Tealium iQ, and Segment, see Zoning Insights Instrumentation.

The simplest and most complete setup is to enable full Autocapture. This gives you all Zoning Insights metrics plus data you can use across other Amplitude features:

amplitude.init(AMPLITUDE_API_KEY, OPTIONAL_USER_ID, {
  autocapture: true,
});

If you prefer to opt in selectively, the minimum required options are pageViews and elementInteractions:

amplitude.init(AMPLITUDE_API_KEY, OPTIONAL_USER_ID, {
  autocapture: {
    pageViews: true,
    elementInteractions: {
      viewportContentUpdated: true,
    },
    frustrationInteractions: true,
  },
});

• Page Views: Required. Computes page-level engagement metrics.
• Element Interactions: Required. Computes click rates, exposure rates, and scroll reach. The viewportContentUpdated option within elementInteractions tracks element exposure when content loads dynamically.
• Frustration Interactions: Optional. Not required for Zoning Insights to function, but enables rage-click and dead-click metrics. When set to true, rage clicks and dead clicks are on by default.

Optionally, you can pass additional options to elementInteractions such as cssSelectorAllowlist or viewportContentUpdated.exposureDuration (default: 150ms).

Zoning Insights metrics

Zoning Insights computes the following metrics for each zone:

Create an overlay

Create an overlay by drawing zones on a page and analyzing user engagement within those zones. An overlay uses either a single page or a page group as its data source:

• Single page: A single URL. For example: amplitude.com/pricing.
• Page groups: A group of related pages scoped by URL rules. For example: /product/*. In page groups, overlays display aggregated engagement metrics across the set of pages.

Create a single page overlay

1. Navigate to Amplitude > Zoning Insights.
2. Click Create Overlay.
3. Specify the URL. If your product supports the same URL matching options as Heatmaps, you can use:
   • Exact match for a single URL.
   • Pattern match with wildcards for similar URLs.
   • Contains for URLs that include a keyword or segment.
   • Starts with for a URL prefix and its subpages.
4. Click Continue to Page Capture.
5. Confirm that the correct URL is visible, then click Take Screenshot.
6. Name the screenshot, describe it, and save it.
7. Click each zone to turn it on or off.
8. Save or apply the overlay so Amplitude can aggregate data for the defined zones.

After you save the overlay, review the metrics, user journeys, and session replays for each zone (for example, clicks, scrolls, or sessions that touched a zone). You can also create cohorts for each zone.

You can also turn on the Heatmap overlay to better understand heatmap clicks on your page.

Page groups

Page groups let you organize your pages so you can scope overlays to a set of related pages rather than a single URL.

AI-suggested page groups

Amplitude can analyze your site's URL structure to automatically suggest logical page groups, so you can set up in minutes instead of building rules manually. Accept the suggestions as-is or modify them before saving.

Create a page group

1. Click Create Page Group and enter a name for the group.
2. Set a condition or rule for the group. For example, set the URL to begin with a specific domain such as amplitude.com/.
3. Finish adding rules and click Create Page group.
4. Specify the URL(s) to analyze. If your product supports the same URL matching options as Heatmaps, you can use:
   • Exact match for a single URL.
   • Pattern match with wildcards for similar URLs.
   • Contains for URLs that include a keyword or segment.
   • Starts with for a URL prefix and its subpages.
5. Click Save.

Edit or delete site maps and page groups

• To edit or delete a site map, hover over it in the left sidebar and select ..., then choose Edit or Delete.
• To edit or delete a page group, select ... in the page group row, then choose Edit or Delete.

If your list is long, select Load More at the bottom to load additional items.

Compare overlays

To compare two overlays side by side, select Compare in the overlay toolbar, then choose a second overlay to display alongside the active overlay. Amplitude renders both overlays simultaneously so you can evaluate changes between time periods, page variants, or different audience segments.

Page comparator

The Page Comparator tab lets you compare performance metrics across page groups side by side in a table. Select a site mapping and an optional conversion goal to populate the table. Columns include views, sessions, views per session, bounce rate, exit rate, scroll depth, page height, time spent, activity, and load time (LCP). Use Customize columns to adjust which metrics appear, and Compare to select specific page groups for direct comparison.

Zone context menu actions

Right-click any saved zone to open its context menu. The context menu includes the following actions:

• View user journey: Opens a user journey analysis scoped to sessions that interacted with this zone.
• View session replays: Filters Session Replay to show replays where users interacted with this zone.
• Create cohort: Creates a behavioral cohort of users who interacted with this zone, which you can use in other Amplitude charts.
• Delete zone: Removes the zone from the overlay.

Export a Zoning Insights analysis

Export your Zoning Insights data to share with teammates or include in presentations and reports.

Select the Share dropdown in the overlay editor toolbar to export an analysis.

Download a CSV

Export zone metrics for the current overlay as a CSV file. Use CSV exports for offline analysis, importing into spreadsheets, or sharing engagement data across teams.

• Exports all zone metrics for the visible overlay.
• Works in both single view and compare view.

Download a PNG

Export the current overlay view as a PNG image. The export includes the page screenshot with all zone overlays and metric labels visible.

• Captures the full overlay with metric badges.
• The export runs in the background: a loading indicator appears while Amplitude generates the image.
• The file downloads automatically when ready.
• Works in both single view and side-by-side compare view.

Copy a link

Copy a shareable URL to the current overlay. Anyone in your organization with access to Zoning Insights can open the link.

Copy link to compare view

Copy a URL that opens the overlay in compare mode with the current comparison target. The Copy link to compare view option only appears when you're actively comparing overlays.

Export requirements

• Save your overlay before exporting. Amplitude disables export options for unsaved overlays.
• CSV and PNG export may require a paid plan depending on your organization's subscription. If your plan restricts this feature, a lock icon appears on the export menu items.