Enhancing Website Performance with Microsoft Clarity (FTF)

Crystal shares insights from installing Clarity on her own websites, using its user experience data to improve customer journeys and increase conversions.

This is the Follow Through Friday Episode For Episode 134 with Celeste Gonzalez.

Key Takeaways:

• Microsoft Clarity Setup: Crystal installed Microsoft Clarity on both her Wix and Shopify websites, noting differences in ease of integration.
• Behavioral Insights: Clarity's screen recordings and heatmaps revealed user interactions, helping to optimize links and reduce customer frustration.
• Pop-up Optimization: Observations from Clarity data prompted Crystal to revise her pop-ups, aiming for a more user-friendly experience to prevent high bounce rates.
• Rage Clicks & Dead Clicks: Addressing rage clicks and dead clicks helped improve site navigation, enhancing user satisfaction and potential affiliate conversions.
• Weekly Reports: Regular reports from Clarity allowed Crystal to monitor ongoing site performance and adjust based on user behavior patterns.

Listener Action Items:

1. Install Microsoft Clarity on your website and begin analyzing user behavior through heatmaps and session recordings.
2. Adjust your pop-ups based on user interaction data to improve engagement and reduce bounce rates.
3. Monitor rage clicks and dead clicks, ensuring that clickable elements lead to relevant pages or actions.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Follow Through Fridays
• 0:15 Revisiting Microsoft Clarity with Celeste Gonzalez
• 1:01 Installing Microsoft Clarity on Different Platforms
• 2:13 Analyzing User Behavior with Microsoft Clarity
• 3:09 Optimizing Website Elements Based on Insights
• 4:48 Weekly Reports and Continuous Improvement
• 6:18 SEO Squad Meeting and Final Thoughts
• 9:48 Analyzing Heat Maps and Recordings

Transcript

Introduction to Follow Through Fridays

[00:00:00] Crystal Waddell: ​Well, hey guys, welcome back to the Simple and Smart SEO Show Podcast. This is Follow Through Fridays. I am your host, Crystal Waddell and this is episode of the week where I go back and revisit some of the expert advice that we've received from guests of the show.

[00:00:14] 

Revisiting Microsoft Clarity with Celeste Gonzalez

[00:00:15] Crystal Waddell: And this week I am revisiting the episode with Celeste Gonzalez. Who came on the simple and smart SEO show podcast to talk about Microsoft clarity. 

[00:00:24] Now Microsoft clarity is a free product. It's a user experience product that allows you to view how people interact with your website. So super cool. 

[00:00:33] Super neat. 

[00:00:34] And today I'm going to talk just a little bit about some of the takeaways that I had from the episode, some of this stuff that I implemented. 

[00:00:40] And then I'm also going to share a clip from the one of our SEO squad meetings. 

[00:00:45] Where we went through setting up Microsoft clarity together. 

[00:00:49] Let me go ahead and jump into a couple of the things that I took away from chatting with Celeste.

[00:00:53] First of all, it's just understanding that Microsoft clarity existed. 

[00:00:57] And that I could implement it on my website. And so that was my first step. 

Installing Microsoft Clarity on Different Platforms

[00:01:01] Crystal Waddell: My first goal, after the show was to install Microsoft clarity on my websites. Now I have two websites in particular that I wanted to install it on. 

[00:01:09] First is the simple and smart SEO show podcast website, which is simple and smart seo.com. So that website is through Wix and the installation with clarity on Wix was seamless. 

[00:01:20] It was so easy. There were specific instructions. But there is a place to put the code. I put the code. We were up and going in moments. It was insane. Very cool. 

[00:01:29] When I installed it on my Shopify store, which is collage and wood.com. That was a little bit trickier and Oh, that wasn't as seamless. 

[00:01:39] And one of the reasons it wasn't as seamless was because it didn't populate immediately. 

[00:01:44] So I, at first I was did I install it wrong? Because when I installed it on my Wix site, it was, almost instantaneous. 

[00:01:51] When I installed it on my Shopify site. It. I just left it alone because I was like, look, I followed the instructions. 

[00:01:57] I'm just going to leave it alone. And I checked back the next day and it was working. Those were the two different experiences I had. 

[00:02:02] Now, someone in the SEO squad, she installed clarity and for her, it seemed to work almost immediately. 

[00:02:08] And she, was using Shopify. So just a couple of different experiences there. 

Analyzing User Behavior with Microsoft Clarity

[00:02:13] Crystal Waddell: The next thing I took a look at was just, the screen recordings of people using the site. And one thing I really thought was cool about Microsoft clarity is it shows you where people are coming from. 

[00:02:23] So say someone visits the site from Pinterest or they visit the site from Google. I can see, how they got there and I can see what pages they're, landing on and going through. 

[00:02:33] And I noticed one recording that showed people trying to click on like images or they're trying to click on words. 

[00:02:40] Which I could link. And that would then take them to Etsy where I was talking about a particular product or something. 

[00:02:46] And why that's really relevant to me is because I'm an Etsy affiliate. So it's ah, duh, those things that they're clicking on should be linked to something so that they can click on it and go check it out. 

[00:02:56] And on the backside, if they purchase anything, I then get an affiliate commission. So it was like a win-win my customer's not frustrated and I still make money potentially. So that was neat to see. Another thing was the pop-up. 

Optimizing Website Elements Based on Insights

[00:03:09] Crystal Waddell: Now I'm going to go in and change the pop-up today. But I noticed that a lot of times, if the pop-up came up, say mid scroll when they were like halfway down the page and they went to X out of the pop-up. A lot of times that seems to turn them off. 

[00:03:23] And they would bounce. So they would leave. And so what I'm going to do instead is I want to create a pop-up that says, basically like, how can I help you? 

[00:03:32] I'm going to brainstorm that with chat GPT, but it's more like, Hey, how can I help you? 

[00:03:36] Are you looking for photo props? Are you looking for senior night gifts? Are you looking for a specific sport? 

[00:03:40] Something where I can then, help guide them where it's not so much in your face? Hey, did you want to buy something? Did you want to buy something? ' cause that was really turning people off. 

[00:03:48] It's really one of it's. Gosh, it's so hard to balance. It's like you want to capture their email address. You want to capture their information? As a site visitor. 

[00:03:57] You want to convert them into a paying customer. But I think for me, the step right now is just figuring out, okay, when you come here, what are you trying to do? 

[00:04:05] And how can I help you do it easier? So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to. I'm going to. 

[00:04:11] I'm going to modify the pop-up a little bit and run an experiment. 

[00:04:15] And see if I can get any better data on the people who are visiting and see how I can better help them. 

[00:04:20] Because who knows, maybe there's a digital product or something that I could create that helps them solve the problem that they have. Let's see. 

[00:04:27] Another takeaway was watching for the rage clicks and the dead clicks. 

[00:04:31] Because if somebody is trying to click on a picture that they think should go somewhere, but it's not a clickable link. That's something that is really easily fixed. And we can help people on their journey. 

[00:04:42] I did have some of those and. I forgot to say one of my favorite things about Microsoft clarity. 

Weekly Reports and Continuous Improvement

[00:04:48] Crystal Waddell: Is, they send you a weekly report, like a Google search console sent you that report every month? 

[00:04:54] Clarity, we'll send you a report every week. And so just having that report come to me for a few weeks. 

[00:05:00] Now I'm starting to understand the language I'm starting to understand. What's good and bad. And what's relative to my site. Did I have more rage clicks this week than I had last week? Or did I have less? 

[00:05:09] I'm like, I fixed that problem. I added a link to that picture. And so now there's less rage clicks and or now there's less dead clicks. And so it's good to see your progress there. 

[00:05:18] And then the very last thing that I would say about Microsoft clarity before I jump into the short clip that I have of us talking about this within the SEO squad meeting. 

[00:05:27] Make sure that you add the privacy policy that, lets people know that you are in fact recording them when they come onto your site. 

[00:05:35] So Microsoft clarity has a great little blurb that you can put in your privacy policy. They also have a wonderful checklist. 

[00:05:41] So as you're going through to set this up on your website, if you follow the checklist all the way through, it will prompt you to put the privacy policy on your website. 

[00:05:50] To let people know that you're using Microsoft clarity. 

[00:05:53] So those are just a few things that I really enjoyed about installing Microsoft clarity and looking at the data that it was giving. 

[00:06:01] I would say with a caveat: it's important that you make it part of your procedures. That you look at this, like once a week, because again, getting used to seeing the data is the first thing, like getting comfortable with what you're looking at. 

[00:06:14] So that way, when you decide you want to make some changes, You can make changes that make sense. 

SEO Squad Meeting and Final Thoughts

[00:06:18] Crystal Waddell: And so yeah, I just wanted to put that out there and now let's pop into a recent meeting with the SEO squad, my weekly SEO group which is open for new members right now. 

[00:06:32] If you join in. September, just like if you joined in August, you will get a free brand interview with me. 

[00:06:39] Which essentially means I will ask you. All sorts of questions about your company. 

[00:06:44] You can contribute questions that you'd like me to ask you. I can generate the list of questions and send them to you for approval or mix of the two.

[00:06:52] But what's really great is you'll then have video for your website. 

[00:06:56] You'll have content to guide chat GPT as it creates different types of content for your business. And it's just really a powerful exercise to help you create a cohesive message. 

[00:07:08] Go to simple and smart seo.com forward slash SEO dash squad. 

[00:07:12] And you can sign up today. $48 a month, and we meet every week to talk about your websites. 

[00:07:18] So let's jump into this meeting. And what we were discussing with Microsoft clarity and I will see you on the other side.

[00:07:27] Okay. So we're here on the dashboard and it's going to give you like all of your sessions, all of these different metrics. Which some of these metrics, I don't fully know how applicable they are to my business or to yours.

[00:07:42] Crystal: But one thing I did know is that. I want to know us visitors only. 

[00:07:47] So whatever your target market is, if it's, Canada, if it includes the UK, whatever, you can add that to you can make a segment to where it is just those people.

[00:07:56] And so this is how you do it. You just go up to the days right here. And like I said, I did 14. You could probably align this with your Google search console. So if you do it, every week, every 28 days, every 3 months, whatever. 

[00:08:11] That kind of makes sense. So you could compare data to data.

[00:08:14] That's the same. But for right now, I'm just applying 14 days. 

[00:08:17] You go to filters and that's where you can choose how you want to filter it like. Day of the week. I don't really have a specific day of the week that people shop versus others. But that may be relevant to you.

[00:08:29] You can exclude browsers, include certain browsers. I'm just leaving all of that to its default to include everything. 

[00:08:35] Because, like I said, the most important thing for me right now is that I choose the location of the United States. 

[00:08:42] Now, once I have it applied, I can go and save it as a segment. And so when I save it as a segment, it's going to ask me, do you want to save a new segment? Or do you want to update an existing 1? I'm Obviously, if you've already created a segment and then you're like, Ooh, it makes more sense to add in this piece of layer of data, then you'd want to update that.

[00:09:00] If not, you'll just save it as a new one. I'm going to close out because I've already got it over here. Okay. Now, the only other thing that I did so far was I I made 2 different segments. I had a new visitor segment and I had a returning visitor segment. Because I want to see the difference in the people who've actually been to the site before and the people who haven't.

[00:09:23] Anybody have any questions or thoughts about that? 

[00:09:25] Michelle: I think that's a great idea. What kind of settings that? New and returning. Okay, I'm going to do that. 

[00:09:30] Crystal: Yeah. And then that way, you're looking at the same data. 

[00:09:34] Because if you look at 28 days versus the last 3 days, your numbers are going to really shift.

[00:09:39] And you wanna try to keep your comparisons very similar, like control for what you can control for as much as possible.

[00:09:46] Oh, view heat maps or view recordings. 

Analyzing Heat Maps and Recordings

[00:09:48] Crystal: Okay. So one thing I noticed with my recordings, I'm not, I'd love to what you've seen in your recordings. My people are hating the pop ups. They're leaving after the pop up pops up.

[00:09:58] So go ahead, Sarah. 

[00:09:59] Sarah: I just wanted to say, when you go to your dashboard, you have to create that watch list yourself. So you add it says my watch list then you had to add those segments that you just created to see them, 

[00:10:11] Crystal: yes, you're right. Yes, you're right That's right. You have to go over here and add the segment. Yeah, thank you. 

[00:10:16] So then once you create the segment, click add to watch list. You can click here. And you choose segment. 

[00:10:23] There's other options, so you'll select segment and then you can pick the segment that you want to watch.

[00:10:28] And then it'll show up in your watch list. Yeah, thank you, Sarah. 

[00:10:30] 

[00:10:31] Crystal Waddell: All right, guys. 

[00:10:31] Thank you so much for joining me on the simple and smart SEO show podcast follow through Fridays.

[00:10:36] I hope that you can take advantage of some of these really amazing free tools that help you understand what's happening on your website. 

[00:10:43] So that you can make changes that benefit your customers and then on the flip side, increase your conversions. 

[00:10:49] And if you need some extra help, I would love to have you inside the SEO squad. 

[00:10:53] Remember that simple and smart seo.com forward slash SEO dash squad. 

[00:10:57] We'd love to have you join us inside there. 

[00:10:59] And if you have any questions about this episode, there's a link in the show notes where you can send me a text message. I'll also have a link to the clarity website. 

[00:11:07] Where you can get their step-by-step guides to install Microsoft clarity on your website. But again, No overwhelm here. 

[00:11:13] Just pick one thing that we talked about today to optimize your site and help your visibility online. 

[00:11:18] And remember. Keep moving forward. I'll see you next time.