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Do you know how a new website would impact all levels of your organisation? Internal stakeholder interviews can provide vital insights to put your website project on the path of success from the start.
When it comes to building a new website, you may think you know what want or need for your business. But are you truly considering all the angles for that website?
We frequently talk about UX as a vital part of any website project. An important aspect of UX is user research.
Data from analytics and various other tools, can tell you what your users are doing and where they are experiencing friction. However, without actually talking to your users you aren’t getting the full picture. You won’t understand the why of what they are doing. Or the specifics of the friction points they are experiencing when interacting with your website.
In this two part series we’ll look how to go about a key element of user research – user/stakeholder interviews. User research doesn’t just include your external audience, so in this first part, we’ll look at interviewing your internal stakeholders.
Your internal stakeholders, from the c-suite to IT and others, probably have some pretty important opinions about your existing, and your planned new website. Conduct research early, and they might even help to drive the entire website design process in a way that meets the needs of everyone in the organisation.
Of course, you have to get them right. Which is why in this post, we’ll cover the what, why, and how of stakeholder interviews when starting the process of building a new website.
The core concept is simple: stakeholder interviews are one-to-one conversations with anyone inside or outside of your organisation who has a direct or indirect stake in your website. Collecting information from these different groups can help you view the project from multiple angles, making sure that you are armed with the information needed to create a website that works for everyone.
As in this part, we are focusing on internal stakeholders, from now on we’ll be referring to internal stakeholder interviews. Just remember, that users are stakeholders too, and we’ll focus on those in the next part.
You might have already had informal conversations with many of your internal stakeholders about the company’s new website. Interviews formalise those conversations, making sure that you have a detailed record of the expectations, needs, and limitations provided by other areas within your business.
Stakeholder interviews help, because they allow you to arm yourself with the information to create a website that works for all of your users and stakeholders, early on. This saves you from costly changes later down the road, when your website is already live.
It’s better to know the limitations of your IT team, or that a FAQ section would make a huge difference to the workload of your customer service team, before the first wireframe gets created, or the first line of code is written.
More specifically, conducting these interviews comes with a few core benefits:
In other words, when conducted effectively, stakeholder interviews offer both tangible and intangible advantages that are impossible to ignore. They create a more cohesive process, ultimately resulting in a more successful website design.
Of course, casually sitting down with a few people across the organisation does not guarantee success. You need to have a plan to conduct these interview the right way to gain insightful and useful information.
That starts with setting some basic parameters. Based on who your most important stakeholders are, determine early on whether the interviews should be held in person, over the phone, or via survey.
Could you choose methodology based on the communication style and preference of the stakeholders you are selecting? You are more likely to get interesting and helpful feedback from people who are comfortable because they are able to respond in a way that suits them.
While some stakeholders will be eager to contribute, others might need some convincing. Consider how you can incentivise them to answer your questions. Whether it is knowing that their contributions are being sought to make sure that the website works for them or their department, or perhaps even a small reward, like a gift card.
With methodology in place, it’s time to select your audience. The best way to do that is to ask yourself – who will benefit from an effective website? The answer tends to cross all levels of your organisation:
For a more detailed look at potential internal stakeholders to include, and what they could contribute, have a look at our post: Key People To Include When Redesigning Your Website.
Next is building the interview itself. Format will dictate this some of this.
If in person or by phone, keep it to 30 minutes or less if possible, and opt for recording the interview over taking notes. That ensures no nuance is lost, and you can pay full attention to the person with whom you’re speaking.
If conducting the interviews with surveys or questionnaires, keep it concise and clear to avoid confusion. It’ll also prevent people from losing interest part way through. Ensure you provide adequate space for long form answers. Yes or no questions are restrictive, and may stop you from receiving those gems of insight.
The exact questions tend to differ based on the person you’re interviewing and your specific goals. That said, here are a few example questions to get you started:
When something isn’t clear, or seems relevant in the moment, don’t be afraid to follow up on it. Great stakeholder interviews tend to be conversational instead of stiff. This puts your interviewee at ease to be honest and insightful about the project.
Obviously for survey based interviews, this isn’t possible. So ensure your questions are carefully considered, and written clearly and concisely to avoid ambiguity. Give adequate response space for those who want to go into longer, deeper detail. You don’t want to stifle potentially rich responses with character limits.
Once all interviews have been completed, it’s time to compile the information. That can take time, often more than the interviews themselves. The time invested in getting this step right though, is well worth the effort.
Start by looking for common threads between the interviewees’ answers. Those threads allow you to build a summary document, no more than a couple of pages long. This should build a picture of the most important insights you have gained in the process. Where relevant, direct quotations from stakeholder responses can bring this summary document to life.
Don’t be afraid to highlight any negative responses either. The goal of these interviews is not to build the report equivalent of rose-coloured glasses. It’s to understand exactly where your most important stakeholders stand on the web design project. The more common the answer, the more it should be highlighted in your research summary.
User research and UX Design are the foundation of all great website projects. While external user and audience research plays a core role in getting there, don’t forget about internal stakeholder interviews. These are an important component to start your new website off on the right foot.
In the next part of this series, we will look at how to conduct effective user interviews. Your users and customers are important stakeholders too.
We’re ready to help where we can. Impact Media can help you to carry out user research as part of the website redesign process. Or if you have already conducted research, we can integrate this into the process. This will speed up the early stages of the project timeline for your new website.
If you’re looking for a UX audit to help inform the direction of your stakeholder interviews, learn more about our UX Website Review.
