Get in the mind of your website visitors 🧠

I’ve always been super interested in the way the mind works.

We had a behavioural marketing class at my university and we were introduced to the concept of neuromarketing.

The first concept? How the brain react to an ad. Basically, they recorded the brain activity of someone watching a bunch of ads on TV.

It was a funny McDonald ad, and here’s what was the most surprising:

“Brain activity was average at the moment of the joke, but cranked up seriously when they showed the burger.”

I was flabbergasted.

So much that I still remember this part 10 years later. Today, I’m not working in neuromarketing BUT I’ve found a way to understand insights into the minds of website visitors with heatmaps and session recordings.

Gauging how relevant your messaging is for web visitors, and tracking them through to revenue is crucial if you want to improve your campaigns and websites.

Behaviour reveals the truth about your messaging. Here’s how to decode it like a neuromarketer

Let’s go 👇

What is a heatmap and why does it matter?

A digital heatmap is like a visual X-ray of your website or product interface.

It’s a sensor that tells you exactly how people behave on your website, by tracking what they have been looking at, and sometimes recording their web session.

It shows you where users are clicking, scrolling, hovering or totally ignoring. Usually hot colors (red/orange) mean high activity; cool colors (blue/green) mean low or no interaction.

But this isn't just pretty data.

→ For marketers: It shows you if that landing page you spent hours building is actually being clicked on and resonating or if users are missing it altogether.

→ For founders: It gives you proof of how people engage with your product or landing page so you can optimize based on behaviour, not just gut instinct.

And that’s why we’re sticking with Microsoft Clarity (mostly because it’s free compared to hotjar)!

It matters because with messaging, having web visitors is a bit like jumping on a video call, but you’re the only one with the webcam on, and the attendees are mute.

You can’t possibly sell properly on that call because you lack the feedback to the folks you’re addressing, that’s why messaging testing is so important (this comparison is from Peep Laja that we’ve interviewed on our podcast)

A heatmap gives you a piece of the puzzle on what is happening in the mind of your visitors—it’s not perfect but every marketer should know their way around it.

It can help you:

• Validate UX and messaging: See what’s resonating and what’s being skipped.

• Reduce drop-offs: Identify friction points that kill conversions.

• Prioritize changes: Focus dev and design time on what will move the needle (especially around core web vitals)

• Take data-backed decisions: Combine heatmaps with Google Analytics to drive smarter, data-backed decisions.

What should you pay attention to?

I don’t know about you, but when I’m drowning in data, I get hit with analysis paralysis 🫨
So let’s zoom in: what can we actually track online, and what really matters for your messaging?

Usually, in a heatmap, you can track the following data:

• Recorded sessions – actual replays of user behavior

• Heatmaps – where users click, scroll, and hover

• Clicks – which elements are getting attention

• Scrolling – how far down the page people go

• Smart events – interactions with key elements (forms, buttons, etc.)

• Time spent – how long users stick around

• Pages per session – how deeply they explore your site

It might seem like a lot, but what you’re looking for is simple:

“What is the ideal path I want visitors to take? Where are they dropping off? And what can I tweak to close the gap?”

In other words, you want to track micro-attentions to your product or service. Here’s a concrete example of the questions I usually ask myself before diving into Microsoft Clarity:

→ Are we providing a similar experience on mobile as on desktop?
→ Are there any sections on the website that are broken?
→ Are people dropping off before they see our core value proposition?
→ Are CTAs being seen and clicked, or ignored entirely?
→ Are users getting stuck or confused at any point in their journey?

Just by answering these, you’ll already be ahead of making sure the foundations are right before you start messaging testing (or just evaluating your website performance)

How to set up Microsoft Clarity for message testing

I did a video on it a few months ago, just after launching my most successful lead magnet.

But since then I’ve been looking at Microsoft’s official documentation and experimenting with message testing with a few clients.

That’s a good introduction, but YOU NEED MORE 🔥, so here’s how to setup heatmaps like a pro.

Observe → Segment → Optimize: This is the message testing loop we’ll use with Microsoft Clarity.

Here’s how to setup the different elements:

Start with settings

First, you need the tracking code properly installed on your website (duh!)

But you also need to make sure you know where people clicked and on what. Go to settings, in masking and select Relaxed mode.

It doesn’t always work, but you’ll better understand who is clicking on what, instead of having all text hidden from you.

1. Filters and segments

First, save visitors separately coming from mobile vs. desktop. A segment is just a set of filters that you’re saving to access quickly later.

Here’s an example that I did with a client:

I create the infrastructure broader first (like messaging sprint) and then I go deeper by creating sub-versions (like PC vs. mobile users) or just keeping high-intent visitors broad so I can understand more precisely trends from them.

2. Funnels and smart events

Funnels and smart events are where the goodies are. Basically, you set up specific steps or you create custom ones to track conversions and actions.

Funnels are basically a combination of smart events or pages visited, you can craft custom ones with multiple steps.

For example, I create multiple funnels to track conversions or action after seeing an ad, usually with UTM parameters as a starting step in page visits, and then I add specific pages visited (pricing, product, or trial page).

So TLDR; funnels are combined smart events and pages visited, you can track these in the dashboard pretty easily.

For smart events, you can find these in “Settings”, and select actions currently taken on the website, or start from scratch and create new ones.

There’s four types of smart events:

• Button clicks – Track clicks on CTAs, nav links, or anything interactive. Super useful for monitoring if people engage with key actions

• API events – These are backend-triggered events, like when someone completes a signup or payment. Great for tracking conversions beyond just front-end interactions.

• Auto events – These are automatically detected actions like scrolls, page exits, or rage clicks. They give you behavioural context without needing manual setup.

• Page visits – Triggered when someone lands on a specific URL (or pattern of URLs). Handy for building funnels or tracking journeys across your site.

My modus operandi is to start with what is considered a proper conversion.

You can hide the ones that aren’t used or edit the event to add more actions to record on different pages.

They’re not always perfect out of the box, so don’t be afraid to customize them. Once they’re tailored to your goals, smart events give you laser-focused insight into user intent and interaction.

3. Set your watchlist 👀

Now that your funnels and events are firing, Watchlist helps you zero in on sessions that matter most.

You can “pin” specific user behaviours like visits to a key page, drop-offs from a funnel, or clicks on a CTA

And the cool thing is that Clarity will automatically surface recordings that match those filters.

It’s a goldmine for seeing your messaging in action (or inaction). I usually use it to review sessions where users almost converted, but didn’t. That’s where the messaging gaps and opportunities often hide.

Now that it’s all setup, let’s dive deep on how you can track the performance of your messaging (and track it).

Get in the mind of your website visitors

By now, you should have:

1. Microsoft Clarity set up (or about to)

2. The right data to look for

3. Ready to put your neuromarketer hat 👀👩‍🔬

Here’s how you can analyze visitors on your website (and track your messaging performance)

Just like the McDonald’s ad when the burger moment beat the joke. Your site has a burger moment too. Clarity helps you find it.

☑️Constantly save new segments

Segments are the most important feature on Clarity (if you ask me, their unofficial spokeperson) because you can filter pretty much anything and save it on a custom view.

It’s perfect for tracking how specific campaigns perform fast and filtering by date range, coming from a specific URL, utm_parameters, traffic source and even clicked text.

You should always create new segments from specific filters to define the environment of tracking you want.

☑️Benchmark new headlines performance

Changing new headlines along with your messaging on specific landing pages, from recent campaigns can be hard to manage.

But when you save segments with the right filters (like utm parameters), you can quickly track the performance and pair it with the right funnel to see if a specific hero section or headlines outperform the rest.

Just make sure that you’re focusing the core angles of your messaging on the right thing, otherwise trying out different angles without a strategy won’t do you any good.

☑️Evaluate scroll depth from ads

Running ads to test your messaging in crucial because it gives you a ton of eyeballs upfront.

But not all ads are made equal, and don’t perform as well as we want.

Let’s say you create multiple ads to test different core angles, like we’re doing when we test messaging. You need specific URLs of landing pages that you will use for ads, and specific hero headlines for each.

You should create a specific funnel for each, in this example we’ve benchmarked that differentiation was resonating a lot more than urgency and emotion, not only in scroll depth, but in overall conversion rate (in that case, additional visit of pages after visiting the ads landing page)

The same can be done with retargeting campaigns and it works wonder.

So keep tracking scroll depth and build specific funnel for each.

☑️Cross-reference JavaScript errors

Conversions and performance are great and all, but make sure you take a look at how the site actually reacts when a user click on things.

We did a new homepage with one of my clients and the JS errors jumped from 12% to 20%. Bad user experience will equal a lower performance or even frustrations that users might leave.

Make sure you’re comparing the data on equal grounds.

☑️Track user intent and add it to your watchlist

By default, Clarity will track your visitors and put their intent into three buckets:

→ Low, Medium, and High intent:

🔴 Low Intent: Minimal engagement. Users may spend less than 5 seconds on the site or stay longer without interacting (no clicks or scrolls)

🟡 Medium Intent: Users might spend more than 5 seconds on the site and interact to some extent, either through clicks, scrolls, or minimal key smart events

🟢 High Intent: Users might spend over 5 seconds on the site and actively interact through clicks and key smart events.

You can easily add them to your watchlist if you don’t know what to track, and always keep an eye on valuable visitors.

☑️Summarize insightful session recordings

A good rule of thumb is to watch multiple session recordings, and then select 20-30 of them for AI to summarize them. That’s another reason why segments are crucial.

By going back to saved segments, you can find specific sessions based on recent changes like headlines.

You can check them individually and remove periods of inactivity to track what users are doing, but it’s more fun to ask AI to summarize it for you or select the top 10 recordings from the segments (you can even use the slang mode to tweak the style like a gen Z chatting with you).

—

The performance of your messaging, and how your website visitors react to it depends on the understanding you have of them, and the expectations they have from your product/services

By now, you should have:

✅ Clarity installed
✅ Segments created by campaign/source
✅ Funnels built by goal
✅ Scroll depth reviewed
✅ Messaging performance benchmarked

That’s all folks!

You’re one step further to become a neuromarketer 🤓🧠

Try one of these insights on your website today, then hit reply and tell me what you saw. I read every response.

Thank you so much for reading, and if you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, consider sharing it with a friend.

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