How I Use Clarity for Client Reporting at Carden Digital

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Why Clarity works well for client work

The practical advantage for agency use is straightforward: one Clarity account, unlimited projects, no per-client cost.

When I started using Clarity across client sites at Carden Digital, the first benefit was economic. Running a paid behavioural analytics tool across multiple client sites adds up quickly. Either the client bears that cost, or the agency absorbs it. Clarity removes that calculation entirely. A new client site gets its own project at no extra cost, and data starts flowing the moment the tracking script is installed.

Beyond cost, there is a reporting advantage. Heatmaps and session recordings are among the most immediately legible data you can put in front of a client. A graph of bounce rate requires explanation. A scroll heatmap showing that most mobile visitors stop halfway down the page before reaching the contact form requires almost none. Clients who have never engaged with analytics data will often respond to a heatmap screenshot because what it shows is visually obvious.

This makes Clarity useful not just as a diagnostic tool but as a communication tool — a way of showing clients evidence for recommendations rather than asserting them on instinct alone.

Setting up a separate project for each client

Each client site needs its own Clarity project. One tracking script, one project, one isolated dataset. Mixing client data into a shared project would make it impossible to separate their behaviour.

Managing access: what to give clients and what to keep internal

Giving clients direct Clarity access can be genuinely useful, but it needs to be the right level — enough to see their data, not enough to disrupt your setup.

Clarity supports three access levels within a project. Understanding the difference matters for client work.

Role	View recordings and heatmaps	Change project settings	Add or remove team members	Best for
Admin	Yes	Yes	Yes	Your own account — not for clients
Member	Yes	Yes	No	Internal team members who need to configure filters or update settings
Viewer	Yes	No	No	Clients — they can explore their own data without touching settings

The Viewer role is the right level for almost every client. They can log in, navigate to their project, watch recordings, and explore heatmaps. They cannot change the tracking setup, adjust consent settings, or modify what data is being masked. This means if a curious client wants to explore their data between reporting calls, you can give them access without worrying they will alter something that affects your tracking.

Brief clients before giving access

Before inviting a client as a Viewer, set expectations about what recordings show. They will see real visitor behaviour — including hesitation, frustration, and exits without enquiry. A client watching recordings for the first time and seeing visitors leave without contacting them needs context, not just data. Frame the conversation as: “this shows us where the website is working and where it needs help” rather than leaving them to interpret it alone.

What to review each month and in what order

A monthly Clarity review for a client site should follow a consistent sequence — the same pages, the same questions, every time. Consistency is what makes month-on-month comparison meaningful.

The value of a regular review is partly in the individual findings and partly in the patterns that emerge over time. A contact form that consistently shows high scroll depth but low CTA click activity is a clearer signal month after month than it is in a single observation. A heatmap that shows improvement after a layout change is evidence that the change worked. Both require comparable data points across multiple reviews.

Start here — Dashboard

Rage and dead click summary

The Clarity dashboard shows a count of rage clicks and dead clicks across the site. Any notable increase compared to last month is worth investigating before anything else. A spike in rage clicks often signals a broken element — a button that stopped responding, a form field not accepting input, or a JavaScript error affecting interaction.

Then — Heatmaps

Key conversion pages on mobile

Check the scroll heatmap on the homepage, main service or product pages, and the contact page — always with the mobile filter applied first. Note whether the primary CTA or enquiry form is sitting above or below where most mobile visitors stop scrolling. This check often produces the most immediately actionable finding in a monthly review.

Then — Recordings

Sessions filtered by exit on key pages

Filter recordings to sessions that ended on the contact page or main landing page. Watch 8 to 10. Look for the common pattern: did visitors reach the form but not submit, and if so, where did they stop? This is the most consistent source of reportable findings and clients respond well because the behaviour is visually obvious in the recording.

Finally — Advertising (if applicable)

Campaign intent levels if Google Ads is active

If the client is running Google Ads and the Clarity integration is set up, check the advertising dashboard for intent level changes per campaign since last month. A campaign shifting from predominantly medium intent to predominantly low intent may signal a landing page issue or a change in the ad itself. See Guide 04 for the full workflow.

Aim for two or three findings per report, not ten

A client report that lists twelve Clarity observations loses its impact. Most will not produce clear recommendations, or they will compete with each other for the client’s attention and budget. Pick the two or three findings that point to the most specific, actionable changes — and present those well — rather than cataloguing everything you noticed.

Turning findings into recommendations clients understand

The gap between “here is what the data shows” and “here is what we should do about it” is where client reporting either adds real value or produces confusion.

Clarity data is not self-explanatory to most clients. A scroll heatmap showing a cold zone below the third section of a page is a visual that needs translation: what does it mean, why does it matter, and what should change? The same applies to a recording showing a visitor clicking repeatedly on a non-interactive element — the client needs to understand what the broken experience was, and why fixing it would improve their results.

The format that works consistently in client reports follows three parts for each finding: what the data showed, why it matters, and what the specific recommendation is. The examples below show how to apply this to the three most common Clarity findings.

Most mobile visitors are not reaching the contact form

Scroll heatmap

What we found: The scroll heatmap on mobile shows the page turning from warm to cool approximately halfway down — above where the contact form is positioned. A significant proportion of mobile visitors are not scrolling far enough to reach the form.

Why it matters: If a visitor cannot see the form, they cannot use it. Mobile traffic accounts for a large share of visitors on most business websites. Enquiries you are not receiving are likely coming from mobile visitors who left before reaching the point where they could make contact.

Recommendation: Add a contact button or short enquiry prompt to the top section of the page — visible within the first one or two scrolls on mobile. The existing form can stay in its current position for visitors who prefer to read first. A sticky “Get in touch” button fixed to the bottom of the mobile screen is also worth considering.

Visitors are clicking an element that is not interactive

Click heatmap + Recordings

What we found: The click heatmap shows a cluster of clicks on [specific image or heading] — an element that is not linked to anything. Session recordings confirm visitors are clicking it repeatedly, suggesting they expect it to take them somewhere or do something that it does not.

Why it matters: Every time a visitor clicks something and nothing happens, their confidence in the site drops. Repeated dead clicks are associated with frustration and early exit. If this element looks like it should be clickable, visitors are being misled by its appearance.

Recommendation: Either make the element a link (to a relevant page or section), or restyle it so it no longer looks like it should be clicked. The former is usually preferable — if visitors want to click on it, there is likely a page it could logically link to.

Visitors from a paid campaign are leaving significantly faster than organic visitors

Google Ads dashboard

What we found: The Clarity advertising dashboard shows that sessions from [campaign name] have an average duration considerably lower than the site average. The majority of sessions from this campaign are classified as low intent. Recordings filtered to this campaign show visitors arriving and leaving within 15 to 20 seconds.

Why it matters: Every click on this campaign costs budget. If most of those clicks result in immediate exits, the campaign is paying for visitors who are not converting and are not engaging with the page. This is a landing page problem, not a targeting problem — the page is not delivering what the ad promised.

Recommendation: The landing page needs to reflect what the ad is offering from the very first section. The ad headline should be visible immediately on the page — not buried below a general company introduction. We recommend updating the landing page before increasing this campaign’s budget further.

Real example: a finding, a recommendation, and the result

Here is how a single heatmap finding translated into a recommendation, a page change, and a visible improvement in the following month’s Clarity data.

What Clarity cannot do for client reporting

Being clear with clients about what the data can and cannot show keeps reporting credible and prevents over-reliance on behavioural data alone.

Clarity does not track form submissions as conversions by default. It can show that a visitor reached the form, interacted with the fields, and either continued or left — but it does not confirm whether the form was actually submitted successfully unless you set up custom events. This means Clarity data alone does not tell you how many enquiries a page generated. It tells you how many visitors engaged with it.

Clarity does not reveal visitor identity. You cannot tell from a recording whether the visitor was a potential customer, a competitor researching you, or a returning client. Some clients ask about this and the honest answer is that Clarity shows behaviour patterns, not individual identities.

Clarity does not generate its own branded reports. There is no “export monthly report” function that produces a PDF. The workflow is: you review the data, take screenshots, annotate them where useful, and write the findings and recommendations yourself. The tool provides the evidence. The interpretation and communication is your work as the consultant or agency.

And Clarity does not explain why a visitor behaved the way they did. It shows what happened — where they clicked, how far they scrolled, where they left. The “why” requires your interpretation, informed by the recordings and supported by an understanding of the client’s business and audience. This distinction matters with clients who may expect the tool to explain intent.

For the full context of how Clarity fits into a website improvement strategy, see my Microsoft Clarity overview. For the GDPR compliance setup every client site needs before Clarity goes live, see Guide 07.

Disclosure: This is not a paid promotion. I have no affiliate or commercial relationship with Microsoft or Microsoft Clarity. It is a tool I genuinely use in my own agency work. Views are my own.