Say what you are, up front
The strongest sites described the business in the hero and gave a clear, immediate call to action.
Case study · 2025–26
Argus Farm Stop
Making a farm stop feel easier to choose
Students cared about local food, but convenience, not price, quality, or even sustainability, decided where they shopped. I followed that finding from interviews and usability tests to a journey map and recommendations for Argus.
the problem
Argus had a strong local-food mission and 200+ Michigan farms and food producers on its shelves. But University of Michigan students weren't shopping there.
what I did
We interviewed 9 students, tested the site with 6 more over Zoom, and compared five competitors. I led the website usability audit and mapped a student's journey from our findings.
where it stands
Our findings and recommendations went to Argus's marketing manager.
my role
I worked with two teammates. We split the sessions between us: I ran 3 of the 9 interviews and 2 of the 6 usability tests. We conducted the competitive analysis together, and I independently led the website usability audit.
- Research
- Student interviews, synthesis contributions, journey map
- Evaluation
- Website usability audit, competitive analysis
- Strategy
- Stakeholder recommendations
“It's hard to match your schedule.”
A student we interviewed
Students weren't shopping there
Argus Farm Stop is a year-round farmers market and café that's been serving Ann Arbor since 2014. Farmers drop off their food, set their own prices and keep 70% of every sale, so Argus can sell local food every day while the farmers stay on the farm. But despite its strong mission, University of Michigan students largely weren't shopping there.
This project started as a class assignment, but I wanted it to mean something beyond the grade. Before we began, I reached out to Argus Farm Stop directly to ask whether this was a problem they were actually facing and whether research like ours could be genuinely useful to them. That conversation shaped everything. It kept our work grounded in real organizational needs rather than hypothetical ones, and it gave me a stakeholder relationship to stay accountable to throughout the process.
Were students avoiding Argus because of affordability, convenience, visibility, or something else? We set out to answer:
- How do perceptions of affordability, convenience, and visibility influence students' decisions to visit and make purchases at Argus Farm Stop?
- How might we improve the digital experience for Argus Farm Stop customers so that they can more easily discover products, understand the Farm Stop model, and convert to loyal shoppers?
the constraint
Argus takes orders on separate stores: the Argus Online Market on Localine, Argus Shop, and Square for gift cards. Only argusfarmstop.com was ours to change, so anything that happens inside those stores became a recommendation instead of a design.
What we heard from students
We interviewed students, watched others use the website, and compared Argus with five competitors.
- Student interviews9 University of Michigan students, split across our team of three
- Usability tests6 students over Zoom, thinking aloud through real tasks on Argus's site
- Website usability auditA WAVE accessibility check and heuristic review I led independently, benchmarked against Agricole Farm Stop in Chelsea, MI
- Competitive analysisFive competitors compared on branding, e-commerce features and storytelling: Fresh Thyme, People's Food Co-op and Centre Markets (direct), Instacart (indirect) and Etsy (analogous)
- Affinity synthesisInterview and session notes grouped into themes in Miro
Patterns that kept appearing
Students wanted to support Argus. The website got in the way.
To see whether the website itself was part of the barrier, we ran moderated usability tests over Zoom with six University of Michigan students who grocery shop and had ordered groceries online before. Most were first-time visitors to the Argus site. They thought aloud while completing goal-based tasks, and we logged task success, time, errors, hesitations, and comments for each session. Argus provided $10 gift cards as participant incentives.
where tasks broke down
0 of 6worked out how to get ready-to-eat food the same day
~1 of 6reached a farm's website by looking up who grew a product
4 of 6set up the weekly produce box, one of them with help
three issues came up again and again
- Text that looked like links but wasn'tFarm names on product pages were red or bold, so participants tried to click them to find the vendor. One said, “I'm looking for a place to click.”
- Getting lost between two sitesShopping happens on Localine, a separate platform with a different look. Participants weren't sure which site they were on or how to get back to the Argus homepage.
- Subscriptions hidden from the shopThe produce box and meat subscription weren't in the main catalog. They lived on separate pages with different layouts, so most participants couldn't find them while browsing.
Our clearest takeaway: even students who wanted to support Argus said the experience felt fragmented. One said they'd rather just shop in person.
The audit I led
I checked the existing site with the WAVE accessibility tool and a heuristic review, then benchmarked it against Agricole Farm Stop in Chelsea, MI. Agricole explains what it is in one sentence above the fold, with a five-item menu. Argus took scrolling to explain itself, behind six menu items with dropdowns, and its three main options were illustrated cards that didn't look clickable.
8errors, including missing alt text and a missing form label
34contrast errors, mostly text over the hero photo
37alerts for other accessibility concerns
what competitors did better
Make reordering easy
Buy It Again, Favorites and Save for Later were standard elsewhere and missing from Argus.
Promote what's in season
Banners, deals and seasonal promotions gave shoppers a reason to look again. Argus had little of this.
Put people in the pictures
Grids of farmers, real photos and short stories humanized the people behind the food.
Convenience outweighed everything else
Convenience emerged as the single most important factor in students' grocery decisions, outweighing both price and quality. Students shop where they can get in and out quickly, on foot or on their way to class. Even when they were sympathetic to shopping local, most assumed Argus would be more expensive than chain stores, a perception that often wasn't tested. And while students cared about sustainability and community, those values didn't reliably translate into behavior once time, money, and access got in the way.
- ConvenienceStudents prioritized getting groceries quickly and easily.
- Perceived costMany assumed Argus would be more expensive without actually checking.
- Values ≠ behaviorStudents cared about sustainability and community, but those values didn't overcome time and access barriers.
- Lack of familiarityThe Farm Stop model itself required explanation.
Meet the person behind the pattern
Sophie doesn't need to be convinced that local food matters. If shopping local requires extra planning, she won't do it consistently. Every participant was a student, so I kept to one persona rather than inventing others the research couldn't support.
Following Sophie through a week
I used ChatGPT to synthesize our research into a journey map. It follows Sophie from her usual grocery run to whether she comes back the next week, and every pain point is tagged with the finding behind it. Her two lowest points both happen on the website: checking whether Argus is worth the trip, and picking how to shop. That's where design could help her most.
what we found
Convenience, not price or values, decided where students shopped.
how might we
How might we make Argus feel easier to choose?
What I'd do differently
The $10 gift cards from Argus made recruiting easy: people said yes to giving us their time, and we never struggled to fill sessions. After LendMate, where we had no incentive and recruiting was hard, that difference stuck with me. Next time I'd also recruit students who already shop at Argus alongside ones who'd never heard of it, so we could build more than one student persona.
What I recommended
I delivered a formal research presentation to Argus Farm Stop's marketing manager, translating our UX findings into a prioritized set of actionable recommendations organized by impact and implementation effort.
- Website & digital presenceUnify the Argus site and the shopping experience so people never feel like they've left. Put subscriptions in the main catalog, link every farm name to its profile, and add Favorites and Buy It Again for quick reorders.
- Brand positioningLead with what makes Argus different: a market and café where you can meet the farmers who grow your food, with a clear tagline, photos of real producers and customers, and a simple explanation of the Farm Stop model.
- Customer acquisition strategyAwareness spreads mostly through word of mouth. Reach students with visible promotions and seasonal items, the café and ready-to-eat food they already look for, and proof that pickup and SNAP make Argus more accessible than they assume.
how we'd know it worked
If Argus acts on these recommendations, these are the numbers I'd watch:
- Pickup orders from students: whether more students order ahead once shopping feels like one site
- Produce box sign-ups: whether subscriptions grow once they sit in the main catalog
- Repeat orders: how many first-time online shoppers order again within a month
Thank you to my teammates Olivia Pinto and Lulu Zhang, and to Alex, Argus Farm Stop's marketing manager.
AI use: I used ChatGPT to synthesize our research into a journey map, and Claude (Anthropic) to help write this case study.
Reflection
I was surprised how many students cared about shopping local. Caring wasn't the real problem; it was finding a time to fit it into their schedule.