Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BF/CM) are upon us—and with them comes the most chaotic time of the year for ecommerce businesses. Remember that scene in “Jingle All the Way” where Arnold Schwarzenegger loses his mind because he missed the Turbo-Man train? That’s how many brands feel on Black Friday: “I have no idea what just happened!”

But you don’t need to feel complete despair. Microsoft Clarity gives you the tools to navigate and optimize your website for BF/CM, helping you make sense of the madness.

Why Clarity is Essential for BF/CM

During BF/CM, your website will likely experience:

• Increased Traffic: More visitors means more potential issues
• Higher Stakes: Small UX problems can lead to significant revenue loss
• Increased demand: This traffic is not the normal traffic that your site gets the rest of the year…these users are ready to buy!. 

Microsoft Clarity equips you with the tools to navigate these challenges and opportunities effectively.

Key E-commerce Features to Leverage

1. Leverage Real-Time Data 

The most important thing you can have on BF/CM is real-time monitoring so you can catch site issues immediately. Clarity provides a complete picture of what’s happening on your site in real-time, making it much quicker to find and fix issues.

Clarity highlights critical issues like:

• Dead Clicks:: Users clicking on non-interactive elements
• Rage Clicks: The digital equivalent of someone punching your website in the face. 
• Quick backs: Pages where people click to and then immediately go back. 

Use these insights to find a way to fix issues as they are occurring instead of in hindsight. 

2. Use Heatmaps to Optimize Landing Pages Before the Big Weekend

Identify where users are clicking and how far they’re scrolling on key landing pages:

• Optimize Call-to-Actions: Ensure your CTAs are placed where they’re most likely to be seen and clicked.
• Enhance Product Listings: See which items are attracting the most attention adjust promotions accordingly
• Filter by smart purchases: Track what successful shoppers are interacting with and highlight those features

Address these promptly and proactively to enhance user satisfaction and boost sales.

3. Build Funnels to understand drop off.

Track the user journey from entry to purchase:

• Identify Drop-offs: Pinpoint where users are abandoning before purchase
• Study these pages to determine areas for improvement

4.Use Include/Exclude Smart Events to Define Key Segments

• Define a key segment: Create an “add-to-cart but no purchase” segment to identify conversion roadblocks
• Find additional info about type of user:  Let Copilot summarize trends or provide insight via chat about these users (device preferences, traffic sources, etc.) to understand if certain types of users are having particular issues

5. Monitor Campaign Performance:

• Leverage UTM filters & smart events to get a quick glance at how campaigns are performing on the big days
• Use real-time campaign data to quickly pivot marketing efforts

Conclusion

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are critical for e-commerce success. By leveraging Microsoft Clarity, you gain actionable insights that can significantly enhance user experience and conversion rates during a critical time of year. You got this! See you on the other side! 

We’re thrilled to introduce the latest version of the Clarity SDK (3.0)—crafted with your feedback and needs at the forefront! With this release, our motto is simple yet impactful: “More flexibility, better control.” Whether you’re developing for Android, iOS, or React Native, this update brings powerful tools to help you optimize your in-app analytics and elevate the user experience. 

Let’s dive into the game-changing features you won’t want to miss: 

🔍 Smart Events: Actionable Insights, No Tagging Required 

Say goodbye to manual tagging! With Smart Events, Clarity can now automatically detect key user actions like purchases, add-to-cart events, checkouts, logins, and subscriptions—all without extra effort on your end. Want even more control? You can define custom events via an API to capture the exact interactions that matter to your app. 

 [Learn more about Smart Events ➡️] 

📊 Funnels: Visualize User Journeys 

Funnels empower you to track the steps users take toward a goal or conversion. Understand where users drop off, how they progress, and pinpoint the exact steps causing friction in their journey. Whether it’s onboarding flows or purchase processes, Funnels offer invaluable insights to improve your app’s user experience.  

[Get started with Funnels ➡️] 

🔒 Data Capture Rules: Ultimate Control for Efficiency 

Take charge of your app’s data usage with the new Data Capture Rules. Limit daily uploads to conserve bandwidth or dynamically enable/disable Clarity on devices with limited memory. These flexible controls ensure that Clarity adapts seamlessly to your app’s environment, offering precision without compromise.  

[Explore Data Capture Rules ➡️] 

📱 iOS 18 Support: Pixel-Perfect Recordings 

We’re officially out of beta for iOS 18 support! Experience flawless session recordings, including seamless out of the box integration with SwiftUI. Dive into crystal-clear user interactions on Apple’s latest platform. 

🌟 Custom Screen Names: Personalize Your Sessions 

Bring your app sessions to life with custom screen names! This long-awaited feature is perfect for developers using React Native, Compose, or SwiftUI. Now, you can rename screens dynamically—on load, during navigation, or at key user interactions. Tailor your sessions to reflect your app’s personality and structure.  

🔄 On-Demand Session Control 

Introducing a la carte session management! Start and stop Clarity sessions whenever you want. Whether it’s user logins, logouts, or button clicks, you have full control over session timing with our new StartNewSession () API . This level of flexibility ensures that your in-app analytics are as precise as possible. 

Why Upgrade? 

These features are designed to give you unparalleled flexibility and control over your in-app analytics and data management. To make the most of the new Clarity SDK, check out the detailed changelog and ensure your development team upgrades to the latest version. 

Take your user insights to the next level with Microsoft Clarity—Happy visualizing! 🚀 

We are excited to share some great news about the Microsoft Clarity integration with Wix! Our latest update brings all of Clarity’s powerful features directly into the Wix platform, making it easier than ever to gain valuable insights into your website’s user behavior.  

What’s New?  

With this update, you can now enjoy a seamless experience with the following Clarity features embedded directly into Wix:  

• Automatic project creation and linking: From Wix, easily create new projects or link existing Clarity projects to your Wix site, ensuring a smooth and efficient setup process  

• Clarity Dashboard: Access a comprehensive overview of your site’s performance, popular pages, and user insights, such as their location and the devices and browsers they use.  

• Session Recordings: Examine user behavior as it happened, identifying where things are working smoothly and where users drop off.  

• Heatmaps: Discover where your users clicked and scrolled, and how they moved around your site. Understand which parts of the page drive the most engagement and which parts get less traffic.  

• Clarity Chat: Interact with Clarity through an intuitive conversational interface to get insights and recommendations using the Copilot experience.  

• Heatmaps summarization using Copilot: Get summarized insights from heatmaps to quickly understand user behavior patterns.  

• Session Recordings summarization using Copilot: Receive concise summaries of session recordings to identify key user interactions and issues efficiently.  

Why This Matters  

Integrating Clarity within Wix provides a unified experience, allowing you to access all the powerful features of Clarity without leaving the Wix platform. This seamless integration makes it easier to analyze and optimize user interactions, enhancing your website’s performance and user experience.  

Explore these new features and see how they can elevate your website’s performance. With Microsoft Clarity’s enhanced integration with Wix, you have all the tools you need to make informed decisions and improve your site’s design and functionality.  

Get started today and stay tuned for more exciting updates.

Happy optimizing!  

We are excited to announce a new integration that will make setting up your projects easier than ever! Microsoft Clarity is now integrated with NPM, streamlining the process of adding powerful analytics to your web projects.  

Why NPM Integration?  

NPM (Node Package Manager) is a widely-used package manager for JavaScript, making it simple to manage project dependencies. By integrating Clarity with NPM, we aim to:  

• Simplify Installation: Add Clarity to your project with a single command.  

• Automate Updates: Keep your Clarity integration up-to-date effortlessly.  

• Enhance Developer Experience: Reduce setup time and focus on building great features.  

How to Get Started  

Getting started with the new integration is straightforward. Follow these steps:  

1. Create a new Clarity project  

2. Install and import Clarity library via NPM:  

npm install @microsoft/clarity
import Clarity from '@microsoft/clarity';

3. Initialize Clarity in Your Project:  
   To get your Clarity project ID, go to your project Settings > Overview  

const projectId = "yourProjectId" 

Clarity.init(projectId);

4. Deploy and Monitor: Deploy your project and start monitoring user interactions with Clarity’s comprehensive analytics.  

Clarity’s Core Features, Now Seamlessly Available with NPM

Clarity’s NPM integration empowers you to access and use the core features that make understanding user behavior effortless. These functionalities are now more accessible than ever, allowing you to customize and enhance your analytics setup with ease: 

• Identify API: Track individual users, sessions, or pages with custom identifiers for more personalized and actionable insights. 

• Custom Tags API: Tag specific actions, elements, or interactions to focus on what matters most for your site. 

• Custom Events API: Gain deeper behavioral insights by tracking user actions manually through custom events. 

• Cookie Consent API: Ensure privacy compliance with seamless consent management tailored to your users’ preferences. 

Join the Community  

We invite you to join our growing community of developers who are leveraging Microsoft Clarity to build better web experiences. Share your feedback, ask questions, and collaborate with others on our GitHub repository or email our support team directly at clarityms@microsoft.com.

The new NPM integration is a significant step towards making Microsoft Clarity more accessible and easier to use. We are committed to continuously improving our tools to help you succeed. Try it out today and see the difference it makes in your project setup and analytics workflow!

We are thrilled to announce a major update to the Microsoft Clarity integration with WordPress! This update brings all of Clarity’s powerful features directly into the WordPress platform, making it easier than ever to gain valuable insights into your website’s user behavior.  

What’s New?  

With this update, you can now enjoy a seamless experience with the following Clarity features embedded directly into WordPress:  

• Automatic project creation and linking: From WordPress, easily create new projects or link existing Clarity projects to your WordPress site, ensuring a smooth and efficient setup process  

• Clarity Dashboard: Access a comprehensive overview of your site’s performance, popular pages, and user insights, such as their location and the devices and browsers they use.  

• Session Recordings: Examine user behavior as it happened, identifying where things are working smoothly and where users drop off.  

• Heatmaps: Discover where your users clicked and scrolled, and how they moved around your site. Understand which parts of the page drive the most engagement and which parts get less traffic.  

• Clarity Chat: Interact with Clarity through an intuitive conversational interface to get insights and recommendations using the Copilot experience.  

• Heatmaps summarization using Copilot: Get summarized insights from heatmaps to quickly understand user behavior patterns.  

• Session Recordings summarization using Copilot: Receive concise summaries of session recordings to identify key user interactions and issues efficiently.  

Why This Matters  

Integrating Clarity within WordPress provides a unified experience, allowing you to access all the powerful features of Clarity without leaving the WordPress platform. This seamless integration makes it easier to analyze and optimize user interactions, enhancing your website’s performance and user experience.  

Explore these new features and see how they can elevate your website’s performance. With Microsoft Clarity’s enhanced integration with WordPress, you have all the tools you need to make informed decisions and improve your site’s design and functionality.  Get Started Today!

Stay tuned for more updates and happy optimizing!  

Attracting visitors to your website is only the first step. It’s not enough to just rank well in search results; you need to make sure that when users arrive, they find a site that engages them and meets their needs instantly. 

The real impact comes from how effectively your site engages users and guides them toward meaningful actions. By analyzing how visitors navigate your site, you can uncover opportunities to improve their journey, leading to better engagement and higher conversion rates. 

This is where Search Experience Optimization (SXO) comes into play, combining SEO techniques with a focus on user behavior to enhance overall site performance. 

First Impressions Matter More Than You Think 

Did you know that it takes only 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion about your website? Researchers at Carleton University discovered this in 2006, meaning that now in 2024 that number could be a lot smaller.  

In this tiny fraction of a second, visitors decide if they find your site appealing enough to stay or if they’ll bounce to a competitor’s page. We can use basic cognitive biases known as the halo and horn effect to describe how a first impression can affect the actions of a user on your site. The halo effect is where a positive impression will lead to more favorable treatment, and the horn effect does the opposite.  

Applying this to users on a website, if a user has a generally good or positive first impression of the site, then they will be more likely to go through the site. Probably more likely to check out other products or services on the site or read more content. However, if a user’s first impression is negative, then they are going to be less likely to stick it out to find the information they are looking for and more likely to leave and go elsewhere.  

First impressions shape how users perceive the entire experience on your site. 

So how do you make that first impression count? Aside from having helpful content, it starts with the visual appeal, load speed, and intuitive layout of your site. If your homepage or landing pages aren’t engaging right off the bat, you risk losing potential customers immediately. Your goal should be to not only attract visitors but to provide them with a seamless experience that guides them effortlessly toward conversion. 

Why You Need to Focus on Search Experience Optimization (SXO) 

SXO is all about blending traditional SEO strategies with UX (user experience) best practices to create a cohesive journey for your users. It’s not just about driving traffic; it’s about what happens after the click. A well-optimized search experience means that users can easily navigate your site, find the information they need, and engage with your content. 

You can use user behavior analytics data to help you to enhance your SXO strategy. Here are some of the ways you can use Microsoft Clarity to get started: 

• Understand Heatmaps: Use click and scroll heatmaps to see where users are engaging most with your content. This data shows which elements grab attention and which are overlooked, helping you prioritize what needs to be highlighted or improved. 

• Analyze Session Recordings: Watch real-time sessions to understand how visitors move through your site. Look for patterns in navigation and identify any barriers preventing users from completing desired actions. 

• Optimize Scroll Depth: Monitor how far down users are scrolling on your pages. If crucial information or call-to-action buttons are consistently being missed because they’re too far down, it’s time to reorganize your page layout to put the essentials front and center. 

Using User Behavior Data to Make Informed Decisions 

One of the most common mistakes in website optimization is assuming you know what users want. The best way to refine your site is to base your decisions on real user data rather than gut instincts. Here are some practical steps to leverage this data effectively: 

1. Segment New vs. Returning Users: Analyzing the behavior of new and returning visitors separately can reveal significant insights. Returning users might be more familiar with your navigation, while new users may struggle to find their way. This difference can highlight areas where your site’s layout or instructions need improvement. 

2. Address Dead and Rage Clicks: Dead clicks indicate that users are clicking on elements they expect to be interactive, but aren’t. Rage clicks happen when users repeatedly click on an element out of frustration, usually due to slow load times or broken features. Addressing these issues can drastically reduce user frustration and improve the overall experience. 

3. Enhance Your Calls to Action: Calls to action (CTAs) should always be visible and easy to find. If users aren’t seeing them because they’re placed too low on the page, move them higher to make sure they are immediately noticeable. This is crucial for driving conversions on service or product pages. 

Real-Life Example: Boosting Conversions Through Small Changes 

At RicketyRoo, we worked with a home building client who was seeing decent traffic but struggled with low conversion rates. By analyzing user behavior data, we discovered that large hero images were pushing valuable content below the fold. We made a few key changes: 

• Reduced Hero Image Size: This allowed important content and CTAs to appear higher on the page. 

• Reorganized Content Layout: We moved key information higher up on the page. 

• Added CTA Banners: Strategic call-to-action banners were placed within relevant content areas. 

These seemingly minor adjustments led to a 122% increase in form submissions and phone calls. The takeaway? Small, targeted improvements based on user data can result in significant boosts in engagement and conversions. 

Best Practices for Using User Behavior Data 

• Focus on One Change at a Time: When testing elements on your website, it’s best to isolate changes to see their individual impact. Whether you’re reducing the size of a hero image or adjusting a CTA placement, doing one change at a time will give you clearer data on what’s working. 

• Prioritize Mobile Optimization: With most users browsing on mobile devices, it’s crucial to ensure your site is optimized for a seamless mobile experience. Regularly check how your site performs across different devices and browsers, and make necessary adjustments to cater to the majority of your audience. 

• Avoid Content Overload: Keep your pages clean and to the point. Too much information can overwhelm users and distract them from the action you want them to take. Make sure your most important content and CTAs appear above the fold. 

Turning Insights into Actionable Strategies 

Data without action is just noise. The real value of user behavior analytics lies in how you use it to guide your site improvements. Regularly check session recordings, heatmaps, and other user feedback to make continuous, data-driven enhancements to your site’s experience. 

Remember, optimizing your website is an ongoing process. Even after significant gains, there’s always more room for improvement. The insights you gain from your data will guide your next steps, whether it’s creating new content or refining existing elements to meet user needs. 

Final Thoughts 

Incorporating user behavior data into your SEO strategy isn’t just about boosting rankings—it’s about creating a seamless, enjoyable experience that keeps visitors coming back. A well-executed SXO strategy turns clicks into meaningful interactions, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. 

Start using these insights today to transform your website into a place where users find exactly what they need, effortlessly. Remember, the goal is not just to attract visitors but to make every interaction count. 

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Celeste Gonzalez started her SEO career while blogging about her journey as a first-generation college student at U.C. Davis. After completing her Bachelor of Science in Managerial Economics, she joined RicketyRoo as an SEO Specialist. After a brief but impactful eight-month tenure as an SEO Specialist, Celeste quickly ascended to the role of SEO Strategist, where she shaped innovative strategies for nearly two years. Celeste now spearheads RooLabs, the cutting-edge SEO testing division at RicketyRoo, where she actively engages with the SEO community by sharing her experiences—highlighting achievements and challenges.