Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) with Amplitude

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open-source initiative that allows web pages to load faster for mobile users. For example, when you view search results on a mobile device and see articles with a lightning bolt icon in the corner, those pages load using AMP.

AMP uses a subset of HTML and doesn't allow the embedding of arbitrary JavaScript. However, Amplitude has created a custom plugin for AMP that enables you to track Amplitude events on AMP websites.

Considerations¶

AMP pages don't have any session support or means of generating a session ID.
The AMP SDK doesn't support setting identify operations. You would need to pass a user properties object in your event parameters, as documented below.

Implement Amplitude on AMP¶

To use Amplitude with AMP, you need to insert a code snippet into your AMP pages.

First, add the amp-analytics component to your AMP HTML pages at the bottom of your <head> tag.

<script async custom-element="amp-analytics" src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-analytics-0.1.js"></script>

Add the Amplitude snippet to your AMP HTML page within your <body> tag. Replace the apiKeyvalue with your amplitude project's API key.

It looks something like this:

<amp-analytics type="amplitude" id="amplitude">
<script type="application/json">
 {
   "vars": {
      "apiKey": "YOUR AMPLITUDE API KEY"
   }
}
</script>

You can log events by adding triggers and event requests to the JSON in your amplitude snippet.

Implementation examples¶

Example: Log a click (click to expand)

Imagine you wanted to log an event named story click when your users click on a link with the ID story. In this case, you would add a trigger on click:

<amp-analytics type="amplitude" id="amplitude">
<script type="application/json">
{
  "vars": {

      "apiKey": "YOUR AMPLITUDE API KEY"
  },
  "triggers": {
    "click": {
      "on": "click",
      "selector": "#story",
      "request": "event",
      "extraUrlParams": {
        "event": {
          "event_type": "story click",
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
</script>

The event parameters are nested under the event object in extraUrlParams. Int this case, Amplitude just logs the event type, which is required.

Example: Log a page view with event properties (click to expand)

Imagine you wanted to log an event named page view when a user lands on your page. You also want an event property page title to identify the page that was viewed. In this case, your trigger would listen on visible, and there is also an event_propertiesobject in your JSON that identifies the page title.

<amp-analytics type="amplitude" id="amplitude">
<script type="application/json">
{
  "vars": {
      "apiKey": "YOUR AMPLITUDE API KEY"
  },
  "triggers": {
    "pageView": {
      "on": "visible",
      "request": "event",
      "extraUrlParams": {
        "event": {
          "event_type": "page view",
          "event_properties": {
            "page title": "${title}"
          }
        }
      }
      }
    }
}
</script>

To set the page title property, you use variable substitution to substitute in the title variable, as in the example above. See the amp-analytics documentation for more on triggers and variable substitutions.

Example: Log events with user properties and group properties (click to expand)

Add user properties and group properties similarly to event properties by introducing user_properties and groups objects to your JSON.

Note

Group properties are available only if you have the accounts add-on.

<amp-analytics type="amplitude" id="amplitude">
<script type="application/json">
{
  "vars": {
        "apiKey": "YOUR AMPLITUDE API KEY"
  },
  "triggers": {
    "click": {
      "on": "click",
      "selector": "#story1",
      "request": "event",
      "extraUrlParams": {
        "event": {
          "event_type": "story click",
          "event_properties": {
            "story id": "story1"
          },
          "groups": {
            "company": "Google"
          },
          "user_properties": {
            "utm_source": "${queryParam(utm_source)}"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
</script>

User identification¶

Instead of a user ID, AMP generates a unique client ID that Amplitude can use for the device ID. This ID gets stored as a cookie for that AMP site.

AMP has a mechanism called a "linker" for sharing the client ID to other websites that are part of the same navigation flow. This lets customers who link from their AMP site to their non-AMP site to carry over the same device ID, so that they can then identify the user ID.

See the AMP documentation for sending and receiving the linker ID.

UTM parameters¶

UTM parameters aren't automatically collected by the SDK. You can pass them explicitly as user properties pulled from query parameters in the URL.

<amp-analytics type="amplitude" id="amplitude">
<script type="application/json">
 {
   "vars": {
         "apiKey": "YOUR AMPLITUDE API KEY"
   },
   "triggers": {
     "click": {
       "on": "click",
       "selector": "#story1",
       "request": "event",
       "extraUrlParams": {
         "event": {
           "event_type": "story click",
           "user_properties": {
             "utm_source": "${queryParam(utm_source)}",
             "utm_campaign": "${queryParam(utm_campaign)}",
             "utm_medium": "${queryParam(utm_medium)}"
           }
         }
       }
     }
   }
 }
</script>

More resources¶

Still have questions? Ask them in the Community.