Using website heatmaps in India: Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity compared
Heatmaps show you where visitors actually click and scroll on your website. Here is how to use them effectively and which tool makes sense for Indian businesses.
If you are running traffic to your website and relying only on Google Analytics to understand behaviour, you are missing a significant part of the picture. Analytics tells you that people left. Heatmaps tell you why.
A heatmap is a visual overlay showing where users clicked, how far they scrolled, and where their cursor hovered. Session recordings go further, showing you exactly what an individual visitor did from the moment they landed to the moment they left.
Both Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity offer these features. The choice between them matters more than people realise.
Microsoft Clarity: free and surprisingly capable
Microsoft Clarity launched a few years ago and is completely free, no session cap, no recording limits, no paywalled features. For most Indian small and medium businesses, Clarity is the obvious starting point.
Clarity gives you click heatmaps, scroll heatmaps, move heatmaps, and unlimited session recordings. It also has an AI-generated insights feature that flags unusual patterns like rage clicks (users clicking the same spot repeatedly) and dead clicks (clicks on elements that are not interactive).
Setup is a single JavaScript snippet, same as Google Analytics. It integrates with Google Analytics 4 so you can view heatmap data alongside your standard metrics.
One limitation is data retention. Clarity keeps data for 30 days. If you want to compare behaviour from two months ago, you cannot do that easily.
Hotjar: paid but more analytical depth
Hotjar starts at around $32 per month for the basic plan, roughly ₹2,600. The paid tier adds features that matter for serious conversion optimisation: conversion funnels linked to recordings, form analytics showing exactly where people abandon your forms, and longer data retention.
Hotjar also has a Surveys and Feedback widget feature, which lets you ask users a question at a specific point in their session. This is genuinely useful for understanding why people left a pricing page or abandoned a checkout.
For e-commerce businesses on Shopify or WooCommerce in India, Hotjar's funnel view helps you see drop-offs at each step of the purchase process. If 60 percent of people add to cart but only 10 percent complete checkout, the funnel view combined with session recordings shows you what is happening between those two steps.
What to actually look for in heatmaps
Having heatmaps is not the same as using them. Here is what to actually examine:
Scroll depth is the most actionable metric. If 80 percent of visitors never scroll past your hero section, your key information or call to action is invisible to most of your traffic. Move your important elements higher.
Click maps reveal false expectations. If users are clicking on non-clickable elements, it means they expect interactivity that does not exist. A common one I see on Indian service websites is users clicking on the services list expecting links, where there are none.
Rage clicks indicate frustration. Clarity surfaces these automatically. A rage click pattern on a form submit button often means the form is silently failing, which is a conversion killer.
Heatmaps for mobile vs desktop
Indian internet usage skews heavily mobile. Look at your mobile heatmaps separately from desktop. The two patterns are usually very different.
On mobile, the most common issue I see is that the phone number or WhatsApp button is positioned below the fold on smaller screens. Users have to scroll to find contact information, and many do not. Moving it higher on mobile layouts alone has improved conversions for several clients.
Check whether your mobile users are tapping the correct buttons. Small touch targets on mobile cause accidental clicks or missed taps, both of which frustrate users and reduce conversions.
How to prioritise what to fix
With heatmap data you can feel overwhelmed by information. Prioritise fixes in this order: anything blocking form completion or checkout, then anything related to contact or enquiry initiation, then navigation and content discovery issues.
Do not spend time optimising sections that only 10 percent of users see. Optimise what most people interact with first.
Frequently asked questions
Is Microsoft Clarity really free forever?
Yes, currently Clarity is entirely free with no session recording limits. Microsoft has not announced any plans to introduce paid tiers as of mid-2023.
Can heatmaps slow down my website?
Both Hotjar and Clarity load asynchronously, meaning they should not block your page from rendering. On slower Indian mobile connections, any additional script adds some overhead. Use PageSpeed Insights before and after installing to verify impact.
Can I use both Hotjar and Clarity at the same time?
Technically yes, but running both adds two extra scripts to your page. I would recommend starting with Clarity, and only adding Hotjar if you need the specific features Clarity lacks, like form analytics or user surveys.