Microsoft Clarity: understand user behaviour on your website

Did you know it’s possible to understand how users interact with your website in real time, without spending a penny? That’s exactly what Microsoft Clarity offers: a free, powerful, and easy-to-use solution that’s gaining popularity among marketing, design, and web development professionals.

In this article, you’ll discover how Clarity works, its main benefits, and how tech companies are using the tool to enhance digital experiences based on real user data.

What is Microsoft Clarity?

Microsoft Clarity is a free user behaviour analytics tool. It shows how people browse, click, and interact with your website, all through visual features such as:

Heatmaps

Heatmaps visually show where users are clicking, tapping, or interacting on your website pages. With this feature, you can:

Identify which areas receive the most attention (or are being ignored).
Assess whether buttons and CTAs are well-positioned.
See if users are trying to click on non-interactive elements, which may indicate navigation confusion.
Adjust your layout based on actual behaviour rather than assumptions.

In short: you can see what draws attention and what goes unnoticed, making design decisions more data-driven.

User Session Recordings

This feature allows you to watch real sessions of users navigating your site, as if you were sitting right next to them. Each recording displays clicks, mouse movements, scrolls, and interactions in real time.

Key benefits include:

Understanding how visitors move through your pages.
Spotting where they drop off or get stuck.
Detecting unexpected behaviours like clicks on broken elements or confusing menus.
Diagnosing JavaScript errors or loading issues affecting the experience.

It’s like running usability tests, but at scale, and without needing to recruit participants.

Scroll Tracking

Ever wondered how far users actually scroll or read through your page content?

Clarity’s scroll tracking gives you the answer. The feature shows how far visitors scroll down, allowing you to:

Identify drop-off points where users stop engaging.
Assess whether key content is being seen or skipped.
Reposition strategic elements like forms, buttons, or calls to action (CTAs).
Improve content structure to make it more dynamic and easier to consume.

This helps you create more effective pages that deliver value within the first seconds of the visit.

With these insights, you can spot errors, usability bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement.

Why use Clarity?

Beyond being completely free, Clarity doesn’t impose traffic limits or require paid upgrades. In other words: you can use it on large or small sites, with high or low traffic volumes.

Other benefits include:

Easy to install

Just add a small snippet of code to your site, or use an integration like Google Tag Manager. Within minutes, you’ll start seeing data.

Intuitive interface

The platform is easy to navigate. Even those without technical experience can understand the reports and insights with ease.

PrivacyfFriendly

Clarity complies with key privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. It doesn’t collect personally identifiable information, keeping the focus on navigation and behaviour.

How a tech company uses Microsoft Clarity in practice

A global consultancy specialising in digital transformation adopted Microsoft Clarity as part of its continuous improvement strategy across digital projects. The tool has been used to:

Understand how users engage with digital content
Identify navigation issues, ineffective clicks, and experience bottlenecks
Make quicker, data-informed decisions based on real behaviour

Recently, the team uncovered usability problems on their corporate website. With the support of session recordings and heatmaps, they clearly visualised where users were facing friction — from broken interactive elements to sections completely overlooked. As a result, they implemented changes that significantly improved site performance and created a smoother browsing experience.

From data to action: using Clarity to enhance UX

Clarity data isn’t just informative, it’s actionable. It helps you understand behaviour patterns and guide real improvements on your website or digital product.

Understand behaviour, optimise the experience

With Clarity’s features, you can:

Discover whether users interact with the right elements
Identify points of frustration and abandonment
Evaluate the efficiency of the user journey

All of this contributes to a more intuitive, seamless site aligned with your audience’s expectations.

Data that guides digital strategy

Beyond tactical fixes, Clarity supports strategic decision-making:

Redesign key pages with a focus on conversion
Run A/B tests based on real behavioural data
Prioritise backlog tasks based on user impact
Adjust content, campaigns, and navigation flows

Over time, the tool helps strengthen a data-driven culture, raising your organisation’s digital maturity.

UX is not just design: it’s business

Improving user experience means:

Reducing bounce rates
Increasing time on site
Boosting conversions and loyalty

Microsoft Clarity becomes a direct ally in your digital strategy, connecting user behaviour with business results.

Clarity for mobile Apps Too

Another major benefit: Clarity also works with mobile apps. With a lightweight, easy-to-implement SDK, you can collect behavioural data from Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native, and more.

This gives you a complete view of the user journey, across desktop and mobile.

Clarity vs other tools: why choose it?

While tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg charge for basic features, Microsoft Clarity offers them all for free. And more: no session limits, no paywalls, high performance, and minimal impact on site load times.

Microsoft Clarity is a complete, free, and effective solution for understanding user behaviour on your website or app. It empowers marketing, UX, development, and product teams to make smarter, data-informed decisions.