Customer interviews: myths and reality

Why this comes up

There is a cheap way, a fast way and a good way to handle customer interviews. Here is how we pick.

We will call out the parts that cost money and the parts that only cost attention.

Working out a budget? See Buy Me App packages and pricing.

How much it should cost

Keep a short log of what you changed and what happened. Six months of notes about customer interviews is worth more than any course.

Budget attention, not just money. Customer interviews works when one person owns it and reviews it weekly for a month. After that it mostly runs itself.

Making it easy for the customer

Price it end to end. A cheap start plus a year of patching is rarely cheaper than getting customer interviews right the first time, and the patching arrives when you are busiest.

Plan the second month while you are planning launch week. Customer interviews that nobody owns after launch decays quietly, and decay is harder to sell to your team than a fresh build.

Keeping it alive after launch

Write down the single outcome you want from customer interviews before touching a tool. One sentence. If you cannot write it, the project is not ready — and no amount of design will rescue a fuzzy goal.

The best examples of customer interviews are boring on purpose. Clear words, obvious next step, nothing blinking. Personality lives in the copy and the photography, not in animation for its own sake.

• ✓One sentence describing who this is for
• ✓A price or a range, in plain numbers
• ✓Legal pages linked in the footer
• ✓Load time under three seconds on cellular
• ✓Proof: reviews, photos, real names
• ✓A support path that answers within a day
• ✓Mobile checked on a real device

Measuring whether it worked

Pick one number to watch. For customer interviews it is usually completed actions — bookings, orders, replies — not visits. Visits flatter you; completions pay you.

Almost every failure we have seen with customer interviews traces back to skipping the boring middle: naming things clearly, writing the confirmation message, testing on a real phone with real thumbs.

Start with the decision, not the tool

Customers judge customer interviews in about five seconds. They are asking three silent questions: what is this, is it for me, what happens if I tap the button. Answer them above the fold.

Write for the person who is tired, on a bus, on a cracked screen. If customer interviews works for them it works for everyone else too.

Questions people ask

Do I need to be technical to handle customer interviews?

No. You need to make decisions and supply real information. We handle domains, hosting, deployment and the technical maintenance.

How long does customer interviews usually take?

For a small business, expect one to three weeks of real work once content is ready. The waiting is almost always content, not build time.

Can we change things later?

Yes. Every build ships with revisions, and you own the domain, the content and the finished product outright.