Hi all,

We are assessing the usefulness of our web site once again, and we're looking for your candid feedback. If you have any comments regarding the bullets below, please feel free to express your ideas or concerns.

-Why do you come back to Expatica.com? What do you think is the best part of our site?

-How could we improve our services (we do realize we have many persisting technical problems, but mention them to us anyway)

-What would you like to see changed?

-What are you missing?

Thanks,
All of us at Expatica

Might get more activity if this was posted in soapbox. IMHO

I use the site mainly for the forums, and sharing advice. I often search for particular information, and the site is usually the first one up, but provides little or outdated information. If some of the 'how to' information could be updated and /or expanded, that would be great.

The forums - the practical ones, such as Housing, Family, Education, Healthcare, Learning the Language, etc. In my humble opinion, these are the first things a newcomer looks for - advice from the people who already made the move.


Once word: Stickies. Topics started cover the same stuff over and over again. Establish what the key questions in every topic are, and make a sticky which will always be referenced at the top (with links to relevant Expatica and external webpages. It might be worth making a Newcomers Questions forum, right at the top of the list, where people don't have to worry about searching the numerous other ones.

There are too many 'main' forums (did I just count 42? ) maybe use subforums (forums within forums). Can some be grouped?
For example:
* Dutch Discussion (Subforums: Dutch News, Discuss Dutch Culture).
* Offtopic - anything not directly related to Holland (International News, Soapbox, Conspiracies 101, Humour).
* Living in the Netherlands (Subforums: Housing, Healthcare, Education, Learning the Language, etc)
* Surviving in the Netherlands (Family, Relationships, Gay and Lesbian, Spirituality, Pets)
* Other country forums (subforums... etc)
* Problems in the Netherlands (Legal, Tax.. etc)
* Enjoying the Netherlands (Things to do, Eating and Drinking, Travel.... etc)

Fix the search facility too




Less main forums - these are sooo messy and hard to find (especially for a newcomer?) There are some, like Legal Problems, sandwiched in the middle of a bunch of 'other country' forums. It's a 5 minute job on PhPBB boards to properly arrange the order of forums.

It's phenomenally difficult to browse to see if anything interesting has come up since you were here last. The front page bulletin boards are in no particular order, and can't be sorted by last post (conversely, the actual threads can't be sorted by anything *but* last post. There's no listing of recent posts anywhere. RSS feeds would be even better...

As an aside, it amuses me how, since Usenet got threaded newsreaders in the early 90s, BBS usability has been heading steadily downwards. (Things we left behind: proper threading of conversations, marking posts as read, decent organisation of subjects, ignoring people who don't like and topics you're not interested in, scoring posts and not reading the dull ones...)

Not gonna mention Forums, that'll sort itself......

What does concern me is that events organised by local expat groups is left aside/not interesting to Expatica...
Maybe a high percentage of users are A'dam/Den Haag based and the team are concentraying on events in that area ?"
- There is life beyond these cities!
e.g. Our 15th Anniversary performance next week with request to post in Expatica "What's on" has not been mentioned yet........

Not being bitter or anything, but Expatica could not go wrong investing a bit of time by contacting our groups and see if it would be of interesting placing a section "Local events" by our groups.
- Even obtaining expat info events and sending mailshots to registered members ?

In short, concentrating on your roots (why did Expatica evolve), rather than commercial benifits might give this site a personal touch ?

Mehari

Thanks to those of you that commented so far. We very much appreciate your honesty!

To anyone else, please feel free to add your comments to this thread.

I have moved this thread to soapbox for more exposure. If you have any future feedback outside of this thread, please see our feedback forum.

First off, I like the re-designs that occurred recently. Bravo on that!

-Why do you come back to Expatica.com? What do you think is the best part of our site?

I come back to read what others are going through here in the NL. However, there is something missing here. It's not a warm feeling and it doesn't seem to be so busy on here, IMO. Sort of a stagnant feeling. I check in once every month or so, but the dynamic is always the same. Not sure if anything can be done about that to promote more of a community feeling.

-How could we improve our services (we do realize we have many persisting technical problems, but mention them to us anyway)

The lack of moderation needs to be addressed. People belittling other people. Ads being posted and left up for days.

-What would you like to see changed?

See above.

-What are you missing?

Also, see above.