After the global pandemic that caused businesses to close their brick and mortar stores and stopped people from going out shopping it highlighted the importance of having a top quality website. The pandemic affected businesses all around the world in a negative way, however, businesses that had an optimised website with good products actually found some benefit from it.
We understand that it can be hard to know how to improve your website and what areas need improvement and what areas are currently successful for you. This is where Microsoft Clarity can help. Microsoft Clarity is a piece of software that records your users sessions so you can see how people interact with your website. This can help you identify if there is something in particular that is negatively affecting your website as well as identifying the good things your website is doing.
What Do I Use Microsoft Clarity For?
I use Microsoft Clarity a lot, and this is to make sure that our clients’ websites do not have any issues or there isn’t something that is driving our traffic away. It’s important to make sure you are regularly checking how your website is performing, especially if you are making regular changes. I often use Microsoft Clarity to identify any trends that are occurring such as, is there anywhere that people are constantly leaving from? Is one part of the website generating a lot of clicks? And so much more.
Another thing that Microsoft Clarity is good for is to keep our clients informed about their website performance and inform them about it in a simple yet effective way. Clarity has some excellent analytics that are easy to understand and highlights issues that your website may be encountering. For example, below is a screenshot that shows me what device my users come from. From this I can see that PC users make up the majority of traffic to my website, and as such I can make sure it is fully optimised to keep the users on the site.
The information from the screenshot above also helps to identify what areas can be worked on. For example, we are heavily reliant on PCs to bring in the traffic. If we improve the UX for mobile and other devices, like tablets, then there is no longer as much pressure on PCs.
I have found the analytics to be really useful as it simplifies the findings and is a great way to present it to the client, especially if they are rushed for time or don’t completely understand complex analytical data.
How Can Microsoft Clarity Help
There are many benefits that Microsoft Clarity holds that means you can expect your business performance to improve. Firstly, it is easy to use. Microsoft Clarity has such a simple user interface which means anyone can use it. Often, business owners think the best software is the one that takes time to learn the most complicated, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Clarity’s simplicity makes it easy to understand for new users and helps you action changes straight away, meaning you can start your road to success now, not in a few weeks.
Another benefit of Microsoft Clarity is it is completely free! This makes it available to business owners no matter how big or small the business may be. Small business owners can often struggle to find affordable software and because of this it can be hard to know how your business can improve leaving them stuck in a rut. However, Microsoft Clarity now makes it easier to review how people use your website and what areas need improving and what services could help your website progress like SEO, PPC etc.
Another benefit of using Microsoft Clarity is that you won’t be breaching any data laws as it is sure to blur out any personal information about the person behind the recording. In 2022 there are so many rules and regulations that we have to abide by and it can be hard to remember it all! Microsoft Clarity makes sure that you are not breaking any laws or rules when it comes to protecting people’s data.
This is an example of what you see when someone is purchasing something from your business
What are Some Drawbacks of Microsoft Clarity
In my experience of using Microsoft Clarity it is mostly positive, however, there are some things that tarnish the experience that you have. One example of a negative, is that quite often it can take a while for the screen to load. Sometimes when I have used Microsoft Clarity it takes a while for the screen to load but the video is actually playing. This is really frustrating and it could mean that you lose out on valuable information and trends as to how people are using your site.
Here is a screenshot of this drawback:
Another negative that I have encountered whilst using Microsoft Clarity is it does not allow you to share or export your findings. This makes it really hard to present the information that you accumulate from Microsoft Clarity, this is particularly frustrating when we are trying to present to our clients.
Conclusion
Although there are a couple of drawbacks to Microsoft Clarity, they do not affect the platform enough for me to stop using them. It is still an extremely useful piece of software that provides actionable insights to the way your users interact with your website. If you would like to monitor the performance of your website using Microsoft Clarity then get in touch with us.
