How To Hold Effective User Interviews For Your Website Redesign

What if you could build a website that you don’t only think will appeal to your audience, but that you know is tailored to your core users’ needs and pain points? That’s what user research, including user interviews, seeks to accomplish. 

Done properly, user interviews can form a crucial component of your website redesign strategy. Add these to the internal stakeholder interviews that we covered in the first part of this series, and you’ll have a very clear idea of what needs your website should meet to be successful.

Let’s dive into the ins and outs of the user interviews, and how any business can implement this user research to maximise their website success.

What Is User Research?

In basic terms, in the realm of web design, user research is the process of getting real feedback or data about how your users interact with your website. Ideally to learn about their behaviour, their needs, pain points, frustrations, etc.

To keep things simple, we’ll save the differences between qualitative and quantitive user research methods and data for a future, more in-depth post.

User research can take many different shapes, including:

• User testing – in which users seek to accomplish specific goals while their actions are watched or recorded.
• User interviews – a qualitative method to learn about user preferences, goals, pain points, and behaviours.
• Session recordings – to gather information which creates heat maps, click maps, and individual session recordings to view user interactions with your website or user journeys.
• Analytics data – which looks at the quantitative performance of a website to draw usability conclusions by evaluating collected analytics data.

What Are User Interviews?

In this post, we’ll focus specifically on user interviews for planning for a website redesign.

Similar to stakeholder interviews, these are interviews which can be carried out in person, by phone/video call. They are to gather useful information from members of your target audience, and actual users of your website.

The data gained through these interviews can be used to inform your website project, and be key to delivering a website with a better user experience and conversion rate.

The Core Benefits Of User Interviews

Especially early in the web development process, user interviews can be key inputs into how you design your pages, user journeys, layouts, and website content.

While testing and analytics tools like Hotjar can provide basic data of where users might experience issues on your existing pages, user interviews go deeper. They allow you to understand your users’ motivations and pain points. Helping you add context to the their actions, and more.

In other words, user interviews create a full picture of your target audience, helping you improve your website UX in the process. The data gained will not just improve your website, but provide audience insights that can help to improve all of your marketing efforts.

How To Select Your Audience

The success of this research type depends to a significant degree on the audience you choose. Put simply, the users you interview need to be relevant enough to provide representative insights. The sample needs to be large enough to be more than just anecdotal.

Be careful to not just interview current customers, who have likely had a positive experience with your business. Instead, try to also find users who have not converted, or who might never have heard of your business. You can find your own participants, or work with user panel companies to find a representative sample. If recruiting your own, consider incentivising taking part by offering something in return for their time (perhaps a voucher). This may persuade more people to take part, and ensure more engaged participation from them.

For comprehensive insights, interview a bare minimum of 5 unique users. But ideally you want 20-30 where possible for a good sample. This piece on sample size by Nielsen Norman Group talks through deciding on interview numbers.

Creating Effective Questions For Actionable Outcomes

Naturally, your questions should focus on the information you most want to learn from your audience. Start with informal, easy-to-answer questions to get your participants in a talking mood. Maybe ask how their day has been or the last book they read. 

Beyond that, your questions can begin to get more specific.

• Industry related (“how do you usually research products in this industry?”)
• Website specific (“what’s the most important thing you look for on a website?”).
• Your website specific (“why did you decide not to download our guide?”)

Listen closely, and follow up when needed to get as much information from your audience as possible.

Build a script with about 15 to 20 questions. Place the most important ones in the middle to maximise the chance of a more comprehensive answer.

Avoid leading and yes-or-no questions. Focus instead on open-ended alternatives with a neutral tone that allow your audience to guide the information in their direction. 

5 Basic Tips For Conducting User Interviews

Beyond knowing what questions to ask, it’s also important to conduct the interviews in a consistent environment. This is to ensure consistent answers from all participants. These tips can help you maximise the effectiveness of your sessions:

1. Choose the right medium. Depending on your business setup and audience, you might not be able to conduct in-person interviews. Phone and video calls can be adequate alternatives. 
2. Keep it casual. To your audience, the interview should feel like a casual conversation rather than an interrogation. An extra few minutes of small talk before the direct questions can be helpful. 
3. Record the session or add a note taker. This ensures the interviewer can focus their attention on the user and conversation. It also helps to record information for later insights.
4. Incentivise your audience. Making them more likely to spend time helping your business. Incentive options include gift cards, promotional items, or early access to a new product.
5. Thank the interviewee and follow up. This ends the interview on a high note and makes it easier to follow up at a later point if needed. If you’ve promised incentives, provide them as soon as possible. 

Turning User Testing Into Insights And Deliverables

Of course, user interviews only matter if they can be turned into actionable deliverables. Insights that can help you improve your website, or inform a website redesign.

Because the direct data coming out of them is raw, you can’t simply run a survey report for insights. Instead, comb each interview for insights on pain points and other takeaways, and jot them down. Take particular note of things that come up frequently and prioritise these.

You can then use those notes to develop deliverables for anyone to use. One great way of creating useful deliverables from your research, is to create website user personas.

Group the users you interviewed into persona types, based on their commonalities. You can use quotes and insights to flesh out these audience profiles so they go beyond basic demographics. This will allow anyone working on your website to learn about the different audience groups it needs to cater to. 

Want to learn more about persona creation? We have a guide on how to create them coming out soon.

Your compiled research and personas can also help to inform future user research. Once you turn interview notes into actionable insights, you can evaluate which areas you still need to learn more about. Then if needed you can adjust your questions accordingly.

Summary

Ultimately, every productive website project should have UX at its foundation. User research, including user interviews, forms an important part in understanding your audience. This will allow you to build a website that delivers effective and friction free user journeys. UX removes subjectivity, turning your choices from a matter of opinion and guesswork, into data led and informed decisions.

It can be great to go into a web design or development project with existing user research already in place. But if you haven’t carried out interviews, they can be included as part of the UX Design process during a website project with Impact.

If you’re looking for a UX audit for your current website, to inform the direction of your user interviews, we can help. Learn more about our UX Website Reviews, or contact us to discuss your requirements.