Many thanks for taking time to review Divviso's new website and for your willingness to provide your feedback on the website's structure, design, and content. Before you begin, however, please take a few minutes to read these introductory notes so that you will understand the website's objective and the core concepts and strategies guiding its development.

Divviso's website will be a technologically-advanced online co-ownership vacation home marketplace designed to make it easy for foreigners to discover, buy, sell and enjoy co-ownership vacation homes in Italy. The website will connect potential foreign buyers with Divviso's international joint venture partnership of U.S. and Italian real estate agencies, Italian property management companies, accounting and legal services firms, and providers of other services that make co-owning a vacation home in Italy as easy and enjoyable as possible.

Divviso is not a traditional real estate business because Divviso's core market is largely pre-sold. Millions of Americans already dream of owning a vacation home in Italy, but they haven't yet purchased a property either because they cannot afford to buy an entire vacation home or because they know they wouldn't use the property often enough to justify the cost of buying it. Therefore, Divviso's actual product, then, is not a property but an innovative method providing a practical way to make a buyer's elusive Italian dream come true: co-ownership.

For most potential buyers, co-ownership is a new and somewhat complex concept. Consequently, Divviso's website must convey a great deal of information about co-ownership and explain, persuasively, co-ownership's many advantages before buyers are ready to begin searching for a co-ownership property that meets their criteria.

This is the challenge Divviso's website developers face, and we have chosen an unusual, possibly unique, website design strategy. We have taken our inspiration from websites selling high-end adventure, exploration and discovery experiences rather than from websites that sell real estate. We have focused on selling Italy itself and the dream of La Dolce Vita, instead of just selling a vacation home.

To grab the attention of our potential clients, those who already dream of owning a vacation home in Italy, and to encourage them to plunge into the myriad details of co-ownership, Divviso is working to create a website that is more like an engaging video game for adults than a typical real estate website.

Divviso's target buyer is an individual or a couple between 40 and 65 years old, who are well-educated, experienced travelers, love Italy, and have sufficient financial resources to purchase and enjoy a co-ownership interest in an Italian vacation home costing from € 100,000 to € 500,000. Typically, the buyer's children are no longer living at home, giving the buyer more freedom and flexibility to live in Italy for five weeks or more every year.

It is important to keep this buyer profile in mind when reviewing the Divviso website because visitors to Divviso's website must be sufficiently self-motivated to make the effort to learn the details and advantages of Divviso's unique vacation home co-ownership strategy.

As our archetypal buyer, we imagine a middle-age couple living in Minnesota. Their family has visited Italy often over the years, and the couple has long dreamed of owning a vacation home in Italy. At the moment the couple logs in to the Divviso website, the couple has taken refuge in their Minnesota home while a January blizzard rages outside. Sitting together at their dining room table, sharing a laptop and dreaming of summer in Italy, they are searching Divviso's website for a co-ownership vacation home. The blizzard is forgotten, at least for now, as Italy beckons.