Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BF/CM) are upon us—and if you work in e-commerce, you can already feel the pressure building. Remember that scene in “Jingle All the Way” where Arnold Schwarzenegger loses his mind because he missed a last-minute toy? That’s how many brands feel on Black Friday: “I have no idea what just happened!”
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 have high intent and are ready to buy!
But this year, you don’t have to fly blind. Microsoft Clarity gives you real-time insight into how shoppers are moving through your site—so you can catch problems (and opportunities) as they happen.
1. Monitor Site Health in Real Time
The most important thing you can have on Black Friday and Cyber Monday 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 Perfect Your High-Traffic Pages
Real-time data helps you spot urgent issues as they happen, but understanding where users focus their attention on a page is just as important. Heatmaps provide a visual snapshot of clicks, scrolls, and engagement, letting you optimize key landing pages before the biggest traffic hits.
- 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 Catch Hidden Drop-Offs
While heatmaps show you where users are interacting, they don’t tell the full story of how visitors move through your site. Funnels help you track the journey from landing page to purchase, revealing exactly where users drop off and which steps need improvement.
4. Segment Your Shoppers with Smart Events to Spot Friction Points
Identifying problem areas is only the first step. To really understand the behavior behind those drop-offs, you need to segment your users effectively. Clarity’s smart events and filters allow you to focus on key segments—like shoppers who add items to their cart but don’t complete a purchase—so you can dig deeper into conversion roadblocks.
- 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. Track and Compare Your Campaigns in Real Time
Segmentation helps you understand who your users are and where they get stuck, but it’s equally important to track the effectiveness of your campaigns. With Clarity, you can measure the performance of each marketing initiative in real time, enabling quick pivots and maximizing the ROI of your BFCM efforts.
- 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
Black Friday and Cyber Monday Optimization Checklist
Before the holiday rush hits, take a few minutes to make sure your analytics setup is ready for the surge. This quick Black Friday and Cyber Monday optimization checklist will help you catch issues early, focus on high-impact pages, and use Microsoft Clarity and Copilot to stay one step ahead during the busiest shopping weekend of the year.
- Verify real-time monitoring setup.
- Review last year’s rage-click patterns.
- Review heatmaps for top 5 landing pages.
- Build a “cart abandoner” segment.
- Ask Copilot for pre-weekend performance summaries.
- Review last year’s session recordings to uncover patterns and pain points.
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!
Ready for your biggest traffic weekend of the year? Log into Clarity and start optimizing today.
