AgCanada
Personalized News Aggregator App
Designed a cross-network news aggregator that unifies 7+ agricultural publications into one personalized experience. Then used real metrics to rebuild the engagement strategy from the ground up, taking average session time from under 2 minutes to over 5.
01The Challenge
Glacier FarmMedia owns 7+ agricultural publications, Western Producer, Country Guide, Grainews, and more, each targeting different farming audiences. But farmers don't care which publication owns an article. They care about grain prices, livestock markets, machinery reviews, and weather.
The problem: there was no single product that brought it all together. Each publication had its own app or website, fragmenting the audience and forcing farmers to check multiple sources.
The brief was ambitious: build one app that aggregates content across the entire network and lets farmers personalize what they see based on their interests. I was the only designer. We had one developer. And 9 months to ship.
- Western Producer — Saskatchewan focus, grain & livestock
- Country Guide — Business management, farm finance
- Grainews — Grain markets, agronomy
- Canadian Cattlemen — Beef industry
- Le Bulletin — French-language agriculture
- Alberta Farmer Express — Alberta regional
- Manitoba Co-operator — Manitoba regional
7+ publications · 7+ apps/sites · 1 farmer checking them all
02Approach
Map content to farmer mental models, not publication structure
Glacier thinks in publications (Western Producer, Grainews, Country Guide). Farmers think in topics (grain, livestock, machinery, weather, policy). I restructured the entire content architecture around farmer interests, not corporate org charts. Users pick what matters to them at onboarding, and the feed adapts, regardless of which publication produced the content.
Ship the MVP, then let the data talk
We launched in 9 months with a solid product, personalized feeds, interest-based onboarding, trending content, and bookmark functionality. But we also launched with an account wall (required sign-up after 3 swipes) and popup ads. Both were stakeholder requirements. I agreed to ship them, then measure their impact.
Watch user behavior, not assumptions
Post-launch analytics told a clear story: low engagement, poor retention, high bounce at the account wall. Users were hitting the sign-up gate and leaving. The ones who made it past were closing ad popups and leaving anyway. The product wasn't bad, the friction was.
Remove friction, redefine success metrics
Presented the data to stakeholders and recommended removing both the account wall and popup ads entirely. The pushback was predictable: 'We'll lose user data.' My argument: the users we're capturing aren't engaging anyway. We're optimizing for registrations, not retention. After removing both barriers, engagement jumped to 5 minutes per session. Active user count dropped, but returning users and retention increased 125%. We traded vanity metrics for real engagement.
Build a cross-channel retention engine
The Trending tab consistently showed the highest in-app engagement. That wasn't an accident, it was a signal. I used that insight to power Klaviyo email sequences and OneSignal push notifications and SMS campaigns. Instead of generic 'open the app' nudges, we sent curated trending article roundups — the content users had already proven they wanted. Trending email campaigns hit 6.5% average CTR. Combined with the UI improvements, this created a retention loop: trending content in emails → app opens → more engagement → more trending data → better emails.
Onboarding — Farm Type → Interests → Personalized Feed
03Key Decisions
04The Metrics Shift
1m 56s
Avg Engagement
Low
Retention Rate
High
Bounce at Account Wall
Sign-up required after 3 swipes. Popup ads on content pages. Generic push notifications.
5m 31s
Avg Engagement
+125%
Retention Rate
6.5% CTR
Trending Email Campaigns
No account wall. No popup ads. Klaviyo email sequences + OneSignal push/SMS powered by trending content data.
05The Retention Engine
Klaviyo email campaigns and OneSignal push notifications, both powered by trending content data. Two channels, one strategy.
42%
Avg Open Rate
11.27%
Best Click Rate
25+
Campaigns Built
5.5%
Avg Click Rate
Industry average click rate for agriculture emails is 3.4%. Our trending content campaigns consistently hit 4-11% — because we sent farmers what they already proved they wanted to read.
OneSignal Push Notifications — 90 Days
28.4%
Confirmed CTR
Avg: 10-15%
3.0%
Click-Through
Avg: 1-2%
0.09%
Unsubscribe
Avg: 0.5-1%
6,694
Confirmed Deliveries
1 in 3 farmers who received a push notification clicked through. Near-zero unsubscribes confirm the content was relevant, not spammy.
06The Proof
Google Analytics year-over-year data after removing the account wall and launching the retention engine.
+338%
Views Per User
9.43 → 41.29
+184%
Engagement Time
1m 56s → 5m 31s
+970%
Event Count
35,560 → 380,649
Active users dropped 40% — but every remaining user viewed 3.4x more content and stayed 2.8x longer. We traded volume for depth.
07What Farmers Said
Direct feedback from farmers using the app. The data validated our strategy, and told us where to go next.
38%
Very Satisfied
30%
Satisfied
18%
Neutral
10%
Dissatisfied
5%
Very Dissatisfied
68% of farmers rated the app Satisfied or Very Satisfied. The dissatisfied responses gave us a roadmap — login friction, search improvements, and deeper commodity content were the top asks.
Most Valued Features
- Markets & grain prices
- Trending news articles
- Explore & content discovery
- Weather forecasts
- Farm machinery coverage
Top Improvement Requests
- More in-depth articles
- Better grain price accuracy
- More cattle & livestock content
- Improved search functionality
- Longer weather forecasts
“Very user friendly, easy to use”
Very Satisfied
“I like the way it's set up and the stories are very well written”
Very Satisfied
“Easy to access and read”
Very Satisfied
“Keep on gathering news”
Satisfied
08Behind the Screens
User flows, email campaigns, annotations, and feature explorations.
User flows, wireframes, email campaigns, and design handoffs
09Design System
Browse the full Figma file — component library, user flows, wireframes, and design decisions.
10Results
5m 31s
Avg Engagement Time
+184%
Engagement Increase (YoY)
+125%
Retention Rate Increase
6.5%
Trending Email CTR
28.4%
Push Notification CTR
9 mo
Concept to App Store
11Tools & Channels
12What I Learned
AgCanada taught me that launch day is when the real design work starts. I thought we shipped a good product — and we did. But the data doesn't lie.
The account wall and popup ads were my compromises to stakeholder requirements, and the data showed exactly what those compromises cost. The most important design skill I used wasn't in Figma — it was in Google Analytics, watching real farmers bounce at the exact moment we asked them to create an account. Removing friction felt like giving something up. Instead, we got everything we actually wanted: users who chose to stay. That lesson — measure the cost of every compromise — now shapes how I approach every design decision, from stakeholder negotiations to feature prioritization.
Interested in working together?
Let's use real data to build something users actually want to come back to.
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