What Microsoft Clarity does for a business website
Google Analytics tells you how many people came and where they left. Microsoft Clarity shows you what they did in between: where they clicked, how far they read, where they hesitated and what they gave up on. It is free, it has no traffic limits, and it comes installed on every website we build.
The short version
Numbers tell you that something happened. Clarity shows you why.
Most analytics reports end in a question: why did they leave, why did nobody use the form, why does the landing page convert on desktop and not on a phone. Clarity is the tool that answers it.
It is free, with no caps
Microsoft offers Clarity at no cost, with no sampling and no session limits. Tools that do the same job charge by traffic, and their free tiers stop recording partway through the month. On a new site that is the month you most need to see.
It shows behaviour, not totals
Heatmaps show where people click and how far they scroll. Recordings replay a visit as the visitor saw it. Together they turn a bounce rate into a specific thing on a specific page that you can change.
It flags the friction for you
Clarity labels rage clicks, dead clicks, quick backs and JavaScript errors automatically, and links each one to the recordings that show it. The first review takes minutes, not an afternoon of watching replays.
It sits beside Google Analytics
Clarity links to a Google Analytics 4 property, so a segment that underperforms in Analytics can be watched in Clarity. Analytics covers the what and the where; Clarity covers the why.
For a service business
What it is worth when the website exists to win enquiries.
A service website has one job: get the right visitor to the form, the booking link or the phone number. Clarity shows how close each visit came.
Fewer guesses about the form
If enquiries are low, the question is whether people are not reaching the form, not starting it, or not finishing it. One scroll map and a handful of recordings answer that in an afternoon.
Evidence for the next change
Every change to a live site is a bet. Clarity makes it a smaller one: watch how the page is used today, change the thing people struggle with, watch again.
A record of what the launch looked like
The first month after launch is when behaviour is easiest to read. Clarity captures it from the first visit, so every later comparison has a baseline.
Ad spend that lands somewhere real
A campaign landing page lives or dies on what happens after the click. Clarity shows whether paid visitors read the offer, reach the action and stop where you expect, or somewhere you did not.
What it will not do
Clarity gives you evidence. It does not make the changes.
The honest limit. Clarity does not test variations, does not tell you what to write and does not improve a page on its own. That is review work, and it still needs a plan, enough traffic to mean something and someone to act on what the recordings show.
- It shows where visitors hesitate. It does not say what to change.
- It records behaviour. It does not run an A/B test; a split test is scoped separately.
- It needs traffic. A page with forty visits a month gives you anecdotes, not patterns.
- It needs someone to look. On a studio build the first review sits inside the 30 days after launch; on the faster packages, the optimisation page here is the guide.
FAQ
Questions people ask about this
Is Microsoft Clarity really free?
Yes. Microsoft offers Clarity at no cost, without traffic limits or sampling, for websites of any size, and there is no paid tier to upgrade to. Microsoft's stated reason is that aggregated behaviour data helps it improve its own products and services. Its data-handling terms are published, and worth reading before you install anything on a site you are responsible for.
What is the difference between Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics?
Google Analytics counts and attributes: how many sessions, from which sources, ending in which conversions. Clarity shows the behaviour inside a session: heatmaps of where people click and scroll, recordings of individual visits, and automatic flags for friction such as rage clicks. Use both. Analytics tells you a page is underperforming; Clarity shows you what is wrong with it.
Is Microsoft Clarity better than Hotjar?
They make different trade-offs. Hotjar sells paid plans with extra workflow features such as surveys and feedback widgets, and limits recordings on its lower tiers. Clarity is free and unlimited, with heatmaps, recordings, friction insights and AI summaries. For a business website that needs to see how visitors behave, Clarity covers the job at no cost. We install it by default and suggest a paid tool only when a specific feature justifies the bill.
Does Microsoft Clarity slow down a website?
Not noticeably. The script is small and loads asynchronously after the page has rendered, so it does not block anything the visitor is waiting for. Every website we build is checked against Lighthouse before launch with Clarity installed, so if it ever cost a visible amount of speed we would see it.
Do I need Clarity if I already have Google Analytics?
If you only want to know how many people came and whether they converted, Analytics is enough. If you want to know why the ones who did not convert left, you need to see what they did on the page, and that is what Clarity records. Linking the two means an Analytics segment can be replayed in Clarity.
Does every 7 Days To Launch website include Microsoft Clarity?
Yes. The 3 Hour Landing Page, the 24 Hour Website and the full studio build all ship with Clarity installed and checked before launch, in a Clarity project you own. On a studio build the first review is part of the 30 days after launch.
Start your brief
Start your brief
Tell us what you're launching and what it needs to do. We reply within one business day with a fixed price and the first available Monday.
- Websites from $15,000 ex GST, fixed. The exact figure comes with the reply.
- A reply within one business day, from Michael, not a form robot.
- A thirty-minute call to hear what the site has to do.
- A fixed-price scope, sent as a web page with a version number.
- Kick-off on the next available Monday, held for you. We take four studio builds a month.