GB-Glasgow: RAF Understanding Defence Audiences Research Study

The Royal Air Force (RAF) has many interesting stories and persistent objectives to inform the public of the role of the RAF in protecting the UK and its interests at home & broad. However, informing and engaging the public and internal audience is becoming increasingly difficult with the current RAF web presence. The RAF website(s) has changed little since 2006, while on other channels such as Facebook &Twitter RAF is successfully engaging users.

To appropriately redevelop the RAF web presence we need to understand:

User Needs: What do people want to know about RAF, its work / equipment etc.?; Where do people go to find the information they are looking for and can they find it?; What do they think about the information they find – is it understandable? Engaging? ; What do they do with the content once they have found it? ; How do they want to engage with the RAF and what encourages engagement?

Structure / Information Architecture: Can the RAF web content be merged into a smaller number of sites? ;How do the range of users talk about and think about the content?; Identifying the most appropriate language and content structure.

The appointed agency will be provided access to analytics, satisfaction survey results, and previous user experience research once the contract has been awarded. This project will be focusing on gaining insight about and structuring a minimum viable product. Thus, we won’t be looking to redevelop the whole RAF digital estate in one go, with high priority/high traffic content delivered first.

General Public Primary Audiences: 18 – 24 years olds who are either at university, college or in further education researching for course and/or interested in a career in Regular RAF or RAF Reserves ;Interested parties (including veterans, enthusiasts, researchers, historians); Decision makers / influencers etc. (including faith leaders, employers, parents and teachers of those interested in a RAF career, veterans sitting on certain boards).

General Public Secondary Audiences: 8 – 18 years old school children and Air Cadets.

Personnel: Current regulars; Current reserves – full time; Current reserves – part time; RAF personnel family members; Civil Servants.

MOD will undertake research activities with the internal Personnel audiences and secondary General Public audiences in parallel with the appointed agency taking responsibility for the external Primary General Public audiences.

Research activities and outputs:

User testing (required)To understand user needs and behaviours across the diverse audience that are already using the RAF websites, or audiences that we want to target to encourage use in the future. Testing will include in-scope representative sites and social media channels.

Additional information: The contracting authority considers that this contract may be suitable for economic operators that are small or medium enterprises (SMEs). However, any selection of tenderers will be based solely on the criteria set out for the procurement, and the contract will be awarded on the basis of the most economically advantageous tender.