Website Redesign Stakeholder Interview Questions

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Key Takeaways

• Stakeholder interviews are the discovery phase's most important source of information that analytics cannot provide.
• Different stakeholders hold different pieces of the truth. The full picture only emerges when all of them are interviewed.
• The quality of the questions determines the quality of the output. Generic questions produce generic answers.
• Conflicting answers are valuable data. They reveal alignment gaps that must be resolved before design begins.

Why Stakeholder Interviews Matter

Analytics tells you what visitors do on the site. Stakeholder interviews tell you what the business needs the site to do, and whether the people running the business agree on that.

Internal teams consistently disagree on:

• Who the primary audience is
• What the most important thing the site communicates should be
• What success looks like after the redesign
• What the top two or three problems with the current site actually are

These disagreements are not a problem. They are information. Surfacing them before design begins means the design process can resolve them with evidence rather than politics.

A redesign built on unresolved stakeholder disagreements produces a compromise site that fully satisfies no one's requirements.

Who to Interview

Interview representatives from at least these functions:

Keep interviews to 30 to 45 minutes each. Longer sessions lose focus. Shorter sessions do not surface nuance.

Questions by Category

Business Goals

These questions establish what the redesign is supposed to accomplish in business terms.

1. What is the single most important thing the new website needs to do for this business?
2. What does success look like at 90 days post-launch? What specific number would tell you the redesign worked?
3. What has the site failed to do that a competitor's site does well?
4. If the budget were unlimited and timeline were flexible, what would you build?
5. What is the one thing about the current site that, if unchanged, would make this redesign a failure?

Audience and Customers

These questions surface assumptions about the visitor that may or may not be accurate.

1. Who is the primary visitor to the site? Describe the person in detail, not just their job title.
2. What is that person trying to accomplish when they land on the homepage?
3. What question does the visitor most need answered before they will contact us?
4. What does a visitor learn from the current site that they probably should not have to figure out for themselves?
5. Who is the secondary audience, and how different is their journey from the primary visitor's?

Current Site Problems

These questions identify what the stakeholder believes is broken. Different answers from different stakeholders reveal alignment gaps.

1. What do you hear most often from prospects or clients about the website?
2. If you walked a prospect through the current site, which section would you skip or apologize for?
3. What does the site communicate that is no longer accurate?
4. Where do you believe visitors are getting confused or lost on the current site?
5. What page or section is the most embarrassing and why?

Competitive Positioning

These questions surface how the company understands its differentiation relative to competitors.

1. Name three direct competitors. How does our site compare to theirs?
2. What does this company do that none of those competitors do?
3. What would a prospect see on a competitor's site that they cannot see on ours?
4. What do customers say, in their own words, about why they chose us over a competitor?
5. What do we do better than anyone but rarely talk about?

Brand and Messaging

These questions identify how stakeholders perceive the brand and what they want it to communicate.

1. If you had to describe this company in one sentence to a stranger at an event, what would you say?
2. What adjectives describe how the company should feel to a first-time visitor?
3. What adjectives describe how the company currently feels on the website?
4. What three things should a visitor know about this company within the first 10 seconds on the homepage?
5. Are there things the current site communicates that we no longer want to emphasize?

Content and Proof

These questions surface what the stakeholder believes should be on the site and what evidence they have.

1. What case studies or project examples would you most want a prospect to see?
2. What proof do we have that we do what we say we do? What is the most credible evidence?
3. What questions come up repeatedly in sales calls that the website should be answering before the call happens?
4. What content on the current site is outdated or no longer relevant?
5. What content that should be on the site is currently missing?

Technical and Operational

These questions surface platform requirements and operational constraints.

1. Who on the marketing team updates the site today? What do they need developer help for that they should not?
2. What integrations does the site currently have, and which of those must be preserved in the redesign?
3. Are there any compliance, security, or accessibility requirements that affect the build?
4. Is the timeline driven by an external event, product launch, or market opportunity?
5. Are there budget constraints that should be part of the scoping conversation?

How to Run the Interviews

Format: One-on-one or small group (two to three people maximum). Larger groups produce group-think rather than individual perspective.

Recording: Ask permission to record. A transcript produced from a recording is more accurate and complete than notes. If recording is not permitted, have a dedicated note-taker separate from the interviewer.

Facilitation: The interviewer should not lead the witness. Ask the question and let the stakeholder answer. Follow up with "tell me more about that" or "can you give me a specific example?" rather than suggesting answers.

Time allocation: 30 to 45 minutes per stakeholder. Use the last five minutes to ask: "Is there anything about the site or the redesign that you feel strongly about that we have not covered?"

How to Use the Findings

After all interviews are complete, compile findings by question, not by stakeholder. Look for:

• Consistent themes: Where do multiple stakeholders independently surface the same problem?
• Contradictions: Where do stakeholders disagree? These require resolution before design begins.
• Surprises: What did you learn that no brief, analytics review, or competitive audit would have surfaced?

Document contradictions explicitly and bring them into the alignment session that follows discovery. A design decision built on a contradiction that was not resolved will satisfy neither stakeholder.

How the discovery phase overall is structured determines how stakeholder interview findings are integrated with analytics data, competitive analysis, and user research into a coherent project brief.

These findings also directly shape the creative brief that governs the design phase. Messaging, audience definition, and visual direction decisions in the brief should trace back to specific interview findings.

For the full structure of how a properly run website redesign engagement integrates stakeholder interviews into the discovery and design process, the service page covers every phase from first call through launch.

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Want Someone Else to Run These Interviews?

The best interviews are run by someone external to the internal politics. Stakeholders answer more honestly when they are not speaking to their manager or a colleague.

LOW/CODE Agency is a leading AI product team for SMBs and startups. We have shipped 450+ products for companies including Medtronic, American Express, and Coca-Cola. Our discovery process includes structured stakeholder interviews with every key role. We compile the findings, surface the contradictions, and bring the full picture into the alignment session before design begins.

We build in Webflow, which means the operational questions about CMS usability, content management, and integration compatibility have clear answers before the interview findings are even compiled.

• Structured interview guide: We ask the questions that produce useful answers, not the questions stakeholders expect.
• Findings documented: Written summaries delivered to the client, organized by theme and by contradiction.
• Contradictions resolved: We facilitate the alignment session that resolves disagreements before wireframes begin.

Website projects start at $10,000+. Every project starts with a 30-minute call.

If you want a discovery process that surfaces what your current site is really failing at, let's talk.