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How to Setup & Use Microsoft Clarity

What is Microsoft Clarity?

Microsoft Clarity is positioned as a free tool that allows users to setup heatmaps and user recordings for their websites, but this tool has so more tools and data points to benefit a marketer, web developer or anyone who is interested in learning more about their customers journey and how they can improve their experience.

How to Setup Microsoft Clarity

Getting Microsoft Clarity up and running is simple, even if you are not technical. You are basically doing one thing: adding a small tracking code to your website so Clarity can collect anonymous behavior data like scroll depth and clicks. Here is the cleanest way to set it up.

  1. Create your Clarity account: Sign in to Microsoft Clarity using a Microsoft, Google, or other supported login. This is where your recordings, heatmaps, and insights will live.
  2. Create a new project: Add a new project and enter your website URL. A project is just Clarity’s way of grouping data for one website so everything stays organized.
  3. Name it clearly: Use a name that will make sense later, especially if you manage multiple sites. Example: “Main Site” or “Service Site” instead of something vague like “Website 1.”
  4. Choose your install method: Clarity will offer a few setup options. Pick the one that matches how your site is managed.
    1. Google Tag Manager is usually easiest if you already use it
    2. Manual install is a copy and paste option if you have access to your website settings or theme files
  5. Install the tracking code: This is the only “technical” step, but it is still straightforward.
    1. If using Google Tag Manager, follow Clarity’s prompts to add the tag, then publish your container
    2. If installing manually, copy the Clarity code snippet and paste it into the header area of your site, typically in the section labeled head or site header scripts
  6. Publish your changes: Do not skip this. Whether you use a website builder or Tag Manager, the tracking will not work until you click the final button such as Save, Update, or Publish.
  7. Test with a quick site visit: Open your website in a private or incognito browser window, click through a few pages, scroll, and submit a test form if you have one. Then return to Clarity and look for activity starting to appear.
  8. Give Clarity a little time to populate: Recordings often show up sooner, while heatmaps and trend insights can take longer depending on traffic. If your site is low traffic, it may take a bit before the views become meaningful.
  9. Review privacy settings and set your first goal: Before you share access internally, review Clarity’s privacy controls and make sure your tracking aligns with how your site handles consent. Then decide what you are analyzing first, like a key landing page, a form page, or a checkout flow, so you start with a clear focus instead of browsing data aimlessly.

The setup is quick, but the payoff is long term. Clarity gives you visibility into real user behavior so you can make smarter updates with more confidence.

What Tools are Included with Microsoft Clarity?

Here are the core tools you get inside Clarity, plus what each one is best for.

  • Dashboard (image below): Your high-level control panel for aggregated site behavior. It helps you spot patterns fast like problem clicks, frustration signals, errors, and engagement trends, then drill down using filters and segments.

  • Session Recordings: Watch real user sessions as replays so you can see hesitation, confusion, and drop-off moments you’ll never catch in standard analytics. Clarity also includes navigation tools like session lists, an inline player, and labeling to organize what you find.

  • Clarity Live (Real Time): A live view of active sessions so you can validate a fix, confirm a bug, or troubleshoot an experience issue as it’s happening.

  • Heatmaps: Aggregated behavior views that show what’s getting attention and what’s getting ignored. Clarity includes multiple heatmap types, including click, scroll, area, conversion, and attention maps.

  • Insights (ML-driven): Clarity’s machine learning surfaces the sessions and pages most likely to matter, so you’re not digging through “the ocean of data.” This is where Clarity flags frustration patterns like dead clicks, quick backs, and excessive scrolling.

  • Filters: A robust set of filters so you can narrow recordings, heatmaps, and dashboards to the audience or behavior you actually want to analyze (instead of guessing based on averages).

  • Segments: Saved groups of filters you can reuse across the dashboard, recordings, and heatmaps. This is especially helpful when you’re reviewing the same audience repeatedly (like paid traffic, mobile users, or high-intent sessions).

  • Custom Tags: Customizable filters that let you pass additional context into Clarity and analyze behavior “your way” such as plan type, logged-in status, content category, or campaign grouping.

  • Smart Events: Event tracking you can set up without code (and also support via API if needed). Once created, smart events appear on the dashboard after users complete the defined action.

  • Integrations (GA4 and Google Tag Manager): Clarity supports connecting with GA4 and installing via GTM, which can make setup easier and help you align behavior insights with your broader reporting.

Microsoft Clarity Dashboard

How is Microsoft Clarity Helpful?

This tool gives you additional data points beyond what you can gather in a tool like Google Analytics and helps fill in the gaps of where opportunities are to improve the website experience.  That improved experience not only helps improve engagement and conversion rates, but it also benefits your Search Engine Optimization strategy since user experience is important to search engine algorithms.  

There are of course, other tools on the market that help gather this data, but this is a great free tool to get you started and although there are some draw backs like the ability to delete specific data that is gathered overall we recommend this tool to anyone on a limited budget who is focused on improving their website.  Need help with your digital strategy?  Contact us for a free consultation.