This article is a high-level walkthrough of how to come up with your event taxonomy. We'll go over best practices on how many events to track, which events you should be tracking, doing QA, and common questions we've received.
For more in-depth best practices and recommendations, check out our Data Taxonomy Playbook.
Table of Contents
- How many events should I track?
- What events should I track?
- How do I know if I've instrumented correctly?
- Does Amplitude de-duplicate data?
- What happens if I go over my event limit?
- Sending data to Amplitude
Overview
This is part of our Getting Started with Amplitude Series! You are currently on Part 4 of 7 in the series: Event Data. We are invested in your success and wrote this guide to help you set up Amplitude in the quickest and most optimal manner. This Quick Start Guide will walk through the data structure and what data you should send to Amplitude. Specifically, it will cover:
- Introduction & Getting Started
- Instrumentation Pre-Work: what you should think about before deciding what data to send
- Identifying Users: what is required to properly track unique users for your product
- Event Data: what events or user actions you should track
- User Properties & Event Properties: what attributes you should send to upscale your analytics
- Cross Platform Instrumentation vs. Separate Platform Instrumentation: when you should do either way of instrumentation
- Using the Amplitude Platform: helpful definitions
If you are a developer or product manager who will be responsible for instrumenting Amplitude, then you should also read our Getting Started Guide for Developers as well.
For more developer specific content, please feel free to visit our Developer Center here.
How many events should I track?
Apps with basic functionality might only require 20 events, whereas a rich feature app might require 200. Our general recommendation is that you should not be tracking every single action in your app.
What events should I track?
You should be tracking any action that is important in completing a process within your app, like completing a tutorial or signup process, progressing through the main mechanic of your app, or making an in-app purchase (IAP). For more details, please refer to our Data Taxonomy Playbook here.
One quick rule of thumb is if the process can be represented in a funnel, then you should be tracking the steps in that process. Below are two examples of funnels.
Onboarding Funnel: To start, we recommend basic tracking of your signup funnel. Tracking this allows you to quickly understand if first-time users are successfully navigating through your signup process.
Retention Funnel: Another important funnel to track is the Retention Funnel. You can create a 2-step or a multi-step retention funnel (with different combinations of events) to see how users are progressing through different processes of your app.
If you need help deciding what events to track please contact your dedicated Success Manager or reach out to us here.
How do I know if I've instrumented correctly?
In order to make sure that you are instrumenting correctly, you can use the User Activity tab in our platform. Fire some events using your test device, go to your project in Amplitude, and then see the Device ID or User ID appear on the realtime feed. Clicking on that ID will bring you to that user's event stream.
As you progress through the project, you should see the list of events you are tracking appear in the user's individual event stream. If you are not seeing the events you want to be tracking or as named, then there is most likely an error with how you have instrumented Amplitude.
Does Amplitude de-duplicate data?
We deduplicate your data to make sure that a unique event is not being logged multiple times. We check every event's Event ID, client event time, and Device ID to see if it has already been written on our database. If the unique event does not exist in our database, then we write it; otherwise, we drop it. If you are using our HTTP API, then we recommend adding an insert_id field.
What happens if I go over my event limit?
If you go over your limit for the month, then data will still be collected. However, you will be unable to access the data via our platform. To regain access, you will either need to upgrade to a new tier or wait until the next month.
Sending Data to Amplitude
Find specific information on how to send data to Amplitude here:
- Amplitude SDKs: Find our list of SDKs here.
- Amplitude HTTP API: Use our HTTP API to send server-side event data.
- Segment.io: See Segment / Amplitude Integration for more information.
- mParticle: See mParticle / Amplitude Integration for more information.