The Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund is a charity whose focus is on meeting the growing need of people requiring support within the RAF Family. Following a four-way competitive pitch process, we are happy to announce that we will be working with them to deliver and develop a new website platform.
Established at the end of the First World War, the RAF Benevolent Fund exists to supports those currently serving in the RAF, retired personnel and their families. And central to the Fund’s growth plan is to create a more effective website, and Access has been tasked with designing and building a new web platform within the coming months.
The aim of the digital transformation is to deliver greater user engagement and site actions, such as applications for support, donations, event sign ups and downloads. By creating an improved user journey for both supporters and beneficiaries and a best-in-class user experience, the Fund hopes to expand its reach.
In 2019, the RAF Benevolent Fund helped more than 71,700 current and former members of the RAF and their families. The Fund’s support spans welfare breaks, grants to help with financial difficulty, specialist advice on benefits and support with care needs and mobility equipment, as well as help for young people through its Airplay programme.
Working with similar scale charities, we have a proven track record of creating highly effective digital experience platforms that are enabling charities to increase donations and actions taken on its site. Our ongoing work with WaterAid has enabled us to not only increase mobile conversion rate by 244% and overall conversion by 63% compared to the previous website, but to lower the bounce rate as well.
Patrick Hamilton, our Operations Director, says: “Effective digital platforms have become vital for many charities to keep going, not only to maintain or grow donations but to engage with their audiences. The RAF Benevolent Fund helps so many people who have given their lives to our country and this is a charity we’re extremely proud to be working with.
“Our project will begin with in-depth audience research, creating personas and holding interviews, before moving on to prototyping. This will drive the wider user experience strategy, design and development.
“Central to our successful proposal was that we will ensure that the user journey is front and centre at all stages, alongside a fresh and inspiring design.
“We will be using our Drupal experience to create an experience that is both user friendly and easy to manage, to meet all of the charity’s objectives.”
