Everyone’s heard of Google Search Console and Google Analytics, but not so much Bing Webmaster and even less so their new-ish tool: Microsoft Clarity.
What is Microsoft Clarity?
Microsoft Clarity is a statistical and analytical tool used on websites. It combines stats reporting with heatmaps and screen recordings.
We’ve been trialing it for the past couple of months and these are our thoughts on four key areas:
- Setup
- Statistics Reporting
- Heatmaps
- Screen Recordings
It’s worth mentioning that Microsoft Clarity is still in its beta testing stage but is available to use.
1. Setup
Setup is simple and straightforward, you will likely need need FTP access or the ability to add the tracking script into your header file – if you need assistance, see below.
Clarity is also free (for now), and I don’t believe they’re looking to charge for this service in the future.
2. Statistics Reporting
Clarity’s statistics are basic when compared to Google Analytics’, but Clarity does give you a nice overview of users, page views and referrals (where the users are coming from), amongst other information.
It’s not a “wow-factor” but a nice to have.
A screen grab of Microsoft Clarity’s Dashbaord
3. Heatmaps
From what we’ve found, sometimes not all components of our site are loaded in their viewport (it’s missing some CSS files/image files), and the heatmaps aren’t always generated from user sessions, but on the whole you can tell where users are clicking and where the hot spots are.
We do need to remember this is a beta product, it’s not a full release.
A screen grab of Microsoft Clarity’s Heatmaps
4. Screen Recordings
This is what we believe truly separates Clarity from the crowd. It’s very powerful and easy to see user journeys. You can see full session data in video format. You can see users click from page to page and what interactions they have on said pages.
A screen grab of Microsoft Clarity’s Screen Recordings page
Want to add Microsoft Clarity to your website?
We can help! Get in touch.
Potential side effects
We’ve not seen any huge impacts, but it can slow down your site.
Josh Cox
I'm Josh — I build, host and look after WordPress sites (and increasingly fast Astro / Next.js builds) for Oxfordshire businesses, from Didcot, since 2016. I also tinker with a few products of my own on the side.
