Digital marketing has been around for nearly three decades. During that time, a set of strongly held beliefs about how marketing and websites should work, and how users behave on them, has emerged.
To be fair, many of these beliefs are grounded in truth. Descriptive CTAs really do provide a better user experience than vague ones like “Learn More.” Clear value propositions matter. Faster sites tend to convert better than slower ones.
But not every widely accepted idea holds up under scrutiny. So how do you separate what’s real from what’s just familiar? This is where behavior analytics changes the conversation.
Instead of relying solely on aggregate metrics or internal opinions, behavior analytics lets you observe what real people actually do on your site: where they hesitate, what they ignore, and how they work around friction.
And when you watch real users interact with real websites, some very common assumptions quickly fall apart .
Myth 1: Our Navigation Is Obvious
Why It Sounds Reasonable
Many teams believe their navigation is obvious because it makes sense internally. Labels feel clear. The structure feels logical. Stakeholders agree that it’s well organized. If everyone on the team can find what they’re looking for, it’s easy to assume users can too.
What Real Users Actually Do
When you watch session recordings, a different story. Users hover over multiple menu items, click into a page, immediately hit the back button, then try another option. Some ignore entire navigation sections altogether. Others abandon the menu entirely and scroll or use search instead of navigating “correctly.”
Anecdotally, on one project I worked on, we found that roughly 30% of our website users had a poor navigational experience. They would click into a page, realize they were in the wrong place, quickly back out, and try another page. Some would even repeat this several times before either finding what they needed or giving up.
What This Means in Practice
Internal familiarity isn’t the same as external clarity. Teams know the product, the terminology, and the structure too well to experience the site the way a first-time visitor does. Navigation clarity isn’t something you can assume; it has to be proven through observation.
Myth 2: Nobody Reads Anymore
Why It Sounds Reasonable
We hear constantly that attention spans are shrinking and users only skim. That makes it tempting to believe long-form content doesn’t matter, and that shorter is always better.
What Real Users Actually Do
Users don’t read everything, but they do read what feels relevant, trustworthy, and digestible.
Users scroll, pause, and spend time on sections that answer their specific questions. Well written long-form content still performs extremely well, especially when it’s well structured. Anecdotally, I’ve seen many long-form articles achieve average read times of 8-10 minutes.
Another important factor impacting whether users read or not is readability. Have you ever opened a blog and been confronted with an 500-word long paragraph and thought, “There is no way I’m reading that”? Your readers are no different.
Short paragraphs, narrow content wells, and features like tables of contents have a big impact on time on page. With these accommodations, users can scan or jump directly to the section they care about and engage deeply with it.
What This Means in Practice
The issue isn’t length; it’s usefulness. Users aren’t avoiding reading; they’re avoiding irrelevant or low-signal content. When information feels valuable and digestible, users make time for it.
Myth 3: Above the Fold Is All That Matters
Why It Sounds Reasonable
This belief comes from an understandable place. If users don’t see something immediately, it’s easy to assume it might as well not exist. And as we’ve discussed, attention spans are shrinking.
What Real Users Actually Do
Data consistently shows that users do scroll—often within seconds of landing on a page. Important context, proof points, and decision-making information frequently live well below the fold, and users actively seek it out.
What This Means in Practice
Where this myth really breaks down is when teams optimize only the top of the page, while the content further down does the real convincing. Both are important, but in different ways.
Above the fold sets expectations. Below the fold earns trust. Pages fail when teams treat the fold as a finish line instead of a starting point.
Myth 4: If Our Website Is Fast for Me, It’s Fast for Everyone
Why It Sounds Reasonable
If a page loads quickly on your laptop, it’s natural to assume it’s that fast for everyone.
What Real Users Actually Experience
Website performance varies widely depending on device, network, location, and whether a visitor is new or returning. Caching can make sites feel fast for internal teams while first-time users experience significant delays.
There’s another important factor: search engines (and likely AI platforms) use mobile-first indexing. That means they evaluate your content based on your mobile site and never look at your desktop site. Mobile performance scores are often lower, even for sites that load quickly on desktop.
What This Means in Practice
One person’s experience isn’t representative. To understand what it’s like for users to engage with your site, you need to measure its performance for all devices. Tools like Google Lighthouse can be helpful for measuring this, but scores are generated one at a time and can vary significantly. A useful feature in Microsoft Clarity is the Performance overview card in the dashboard, which creates an aggregate performance score for all the sessions on a site or page.
Myth 5: We Understand Our Users Because We Are Users
Why It Sounds Reasonable
Internal teams spend all day on the site. They use the product. They know the flows. It feels logical to assume this makes them good proxies for user behavior.
What Real Users Actually Do
If you’re reading this blog, you likely don’t interact with websites the way most people do. You’re more patient, more motivated, and more familiar with digital patterns. You’re also financially incentivized to understand your website.
Real users don’t have that incentive. They don’t share your context, vocabulary, or tolerance for friction. They don’t know what’s “supposed” to happen next. And they won’t stick around to find out.
What This Means in Practice
Familiarity creates blind spots. The more you know a product or site, the harder it becomes to see it the way new users do. Watching session recordings and analyzing heatmaps can expose gaps that internal testing almost always misses.
Myth 6: Big Results Require Big Changes
Why It Sounds Reasonable
Meaningful gains feel like they should require big redesigns, major overhauls, or entirely new user journeys. And to be fair, they sometimes do. Massive website redesign projects or long-term investments in performance can deliver huge results. But they’re not always necessary.
What’s Actually Happening
Behavior analytics often reveals that small points of confusion create outsized problems. Fixing those specific moments can drive dramatic results.
One Clarity customer, for example, helped a client go from zero conversions to 40 new consultation bookings while reducing dead clicks from 9.5% to 0.5%. And they didn’t redesign the entire site. They used behavior analytics to identify the problem and designed a single new landing page. The impact was immediate and measurable.
What This Means in Practice
Precision beats scale. The biggest improvements often come from focused, data-driven changes informed by user behavior.
Conclusion
Many website myths persist because they sound reasonable and feel safe. They’re comforting, in a way, because they reduce uncertainty and make decisions easier.
But watching session recordings has a way of challenging even the most confident assumptions. And once you start observing real behavior, it becomes much easier to make data-driven decisions that serve the needs of your users.