Have you ever tried to complete an online order form only to find there just aren’t enough boxes for your address. Or that there are too many and the form will not submit until all boxes are completed? Have you ever filled them with gibberish? Ever received one filled with gibberish?
This got me thinking as to how inconsiderate we all can be when requesting details like addresses. Street, Town, State, Zip code.
Quite simple you may think, but not everyone lives in a state or even knows what a State is, and did you remember the Country?
We need to be far more considerate when designing web sites. The Internet transcends International boundaries but many business seem to forget this and design sites for their own back yard.
Recently we received an e-mail to request a brochure it was to be sent to PROSPECT, PA 16052 now we all know where that is, right? Well the sender presumed so. Obviously Prospect is the town. PA? Errr OK it must be some sort of abbreviation PA? PA? PA? Forget it, I don’t know!
Then we have some digits, obviously a Zip code and then a country? NO, no country given. Do I know what country this PA place is in? Well yes I do, but you see the problems some people may have.
I also recently wanted to purchase some compression software Anyway I found the software I wanted and the price was something like $30. Fine, I was happy – let me spend. But hang on $30 is that USD or Australian dollars, and for that matter how many other countries use dollars?
I had a good look around the site and eventually found the address of the company and guess what it was in Great Britain. Now in case you don’t know the British use British pounds (GBP)!
This was a British site advertising Dollars as to whether that was US or Australian is anyone’s guess. But I wanted to pay then in British pounds for which there was no price. This gave me a headache so I left NO SALE.
In case you haven’t already guessed and why should you have, I live in Britain to be exact Scotland. Did you guess that in my first paragraph? Probably not, so why expect your visitors to play guessing games. The Internet is International, price and address Internationally or risk loosing sales.
PA, I don’t know what this stands for or where it is. Neither I am sure does the majority of the rest of the world.
State??? A state of what? If you supply no alternative don’t expect your users to fill it with something useful.
Zip codes, are they always five digit or should I leave room for more?
What country are you in? It seems obvious to us they told us in high school, but not everyone will know.
Your telephone number. Are there only nine digits? Because if there are, I for one will get a disconnected tone all day long. What is your International prefix code?
$ What currency is that? Is that USD? If it is tell them.
If you are happy with your back yard that’s fine. But if you don’t want to risk losing sales then think truly globally and redesign your site to reflect that.
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