User interviews

User interviews ask people why they did what they did. Priceless qualitative input.

Who to interview

• New customers (what convinced you?)
• Non-converters (what stopped you?)
• Long-term users (what keeps you?)

Question patterns

• Walk me through your signup process
• What made you hesitate?
• What almost made you not complete?
• What else were you considering?

Volume

5-10 interviews per segment. Patterns emerge at 5-7 for most topics.

Output

Qualitative insights that generate hypotheses for testing.

What to do with this

• Run interviews on both converters + non-converters, each reveals different insights about what works and what broke
• Ask about specific moments ("walk me through the day you signed up"), story-based questions surface decision triggers
• Record the exact language customers use, their phrases become better copy than anything your team writes
• Conduct 8-15 interviews per research question, patterns stabilize around 10-12 and more adds diminishing returns
• Turn interview insights into testable hypotheses within a week, stale interviews don't drive test velocity