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The Expatforever directory has been evolving from an open source based experimental online shop to a serious expat website. Today Expatforever offers real value to the international community in Paris by guiding them though the jungle of providers in town and recommending to them those companies and freelances who speak their languages or at least fluent English. As a selective and interactive directory, it aims to develop more functionalities that are useful to the match-making of expats and long-term tourists with multilingual relocation assistants, teachers, coaches, city guides, event managers, theatre and ballet schools, lawyers, accountants, doctors, etc. whom they can understand more easily than the local providers who only speak French. Initially concentrating on the structure and process flows, the graphics needed to catch up. "We were told by branding professionals that our website was not 'sexy' enough." states Christiane Horn, founder and director of Expatforever Paris. "So we started concentrating on this first asking ourselves: What actually makes a website 'sexy' ? "Initially, I was convinced that usefulness was the most attractive part of a website" Christiane continues. "Looking at Amazon or Ebay, I never thought that these platforms, especially in their early years, were esthetically very appealing. Their success results from their user generated content including the pricing and the stability of the process flows. Having gone through hundreds of hours of development work, I actually used to think that a functioning and completely debugged backoffice was already quite 'sexy'. Today I know that visitors need to feel 'at home' on a website so we started thinking about every button and menu point as a piece of furniture to make life and movement within this 'online apartment' as agreeable as possible. During this creative process, Expatforever Paris is very open to any kind of suggestion coming from visitors and web professionals about how to enhance the usability. Like in real life, brains and beauty need to evolve together at the same time. One without the other does not make people happy. Christiane Horn: "This website is a construction zone but a pretty advanced one. Just imagine the Empire State Building half built and us running around with yellow construction helmets." For gathering more info about a serious expat website, check out Expatforever.com, please check out this link.
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