If you have a free-form field, how often to people screw up their own address or phone number?
And if you alienate them, does your support cost go up or down?
Dear American Website Owner
141–149 of 149 posts
Re: Dear American Website Owner
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I wanted to write a blog post which elaborated on all possible internationalization issues, it would become a PhD dissertation and take a year to write. And then it wouldn't even touch on all the issues. You have to start somewhere — and let's face it, dealing with the two silly problems I mentioned would get us 80% of the way there.
I had to deal with International phone numbers before. Obviously, I had to deal with other issues, too, but the phone number was the important piece. Early on, before PayPal or other services caught on, we created a system to verify credit card users with their telephone. They would enter their telephone number and we'd call them. It was simple. The problem was with international users. The system was simple: it woul…
I don't think your assumption is right — if you tell a European to give you his phone number 'just as for SMS messaging', you'll always get the right thing, with the country code, beginning with a '+'.
To send a text message you have to use a full international phone number, so everyone uses them. You can't deliver an SMS message without a full number.
Re: Dear American Website Owner
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
E.164 format. Every valid number in the world can be represented. The downside is that most people don't even know that this exists, so when doing an international based system, you have a filter based on the country they user is based in and automatically apply any codes needed. Just strip everything out of the field that isn't a number and prepend the country code if the region doesn't normally include it. That mea…
The transform isn't that simple. For example, UK numbers start with a 0 to indicate STD (long distance) - but that 0 must be stripped for calls from another country. Ie, 01234 567890 is dialed from abroad as +44 1234 567890.
Additionally these rules can and do change. For example I know that the national numbering plan in the Czech Republic changed around 2002 for instance so a leading 0 for national calls was removed. Getting all websites in the world to understand changing numbering plans would be quite a feat, and for most sites not worth the effort.
Re: Dear American Website Owner
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think being international is a standard of sorts. Eg: - handling international times (say, Feb 1 2007 rather than 01/02/07 or 02/01/07) - allowing people to enter their normal phone numbers and addresses - knowing that United Kingdom is preferred for addressing and Great Britain is not.
I want to see the library and code that handles all of those possibilities.
Ask a website nicely - 95% of them handle this fine. Or write it yourself.
Re: Dear American Website Owner
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to deal with International phone numbers before. Obviously, I had to deal with other issues, too, but the phone number was the important piece. Early on, before PayPal or other services caught on, we created a system to verify credit card users with their telephone. They would enter their telephone number and we'd call them. It was simple. The problem was with international users. The system was simple: it woul…
I don't think your assumption is right — if you tell a European to give you his phone number 'just as for SMS messaging', you'll always get the right thing, with the country code, beginning with a '+'. To send a text message you have to use a full international phone number, so everyone uses them. You can't deliver an SMS message without a full number.
Couple things to consider. First, this was written up in 2003, and expanded on in 2004. I don't know if text messaging is as big then as it is now. Secondly, we weren't sending them a text message. While asking them might not hurt, we didn't want a cell phone. Asking for a phone number "just as for SMS messaging" might be more confusing. I'd rather just ask for the phone number, and fix it myself.
At least, that were my thoughts at the time.
Re: Dear American Website Owner
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure that is completely true. I thought ZIP codes could not cross state lines (at least in the US). And after looking at them, I couldn't find any that were not unique.[ http://www.aggdata.com/free/zip-code ] Edit: Sorry, There are a few that cross state lines, when using the first two digits as the state code. However, each ZIP code is unique to a town; therefore, one could use it in the above scenario.
"Each ZIP code is unique to a town"? No, not really. Small towns without their own post office typically share a ZIP code with the closest city because that's where the post office that delivers their mail is.
I guess my point is, the ZIP code should be a pretty good indication of the state that the person resides in. No, it is not perfect, but I think it lends itself to be somethng that can help with the OPs concerns.
Re: Dear American Website Owner
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
An interesting point about tone. If this had been pitched as "sites do international addresses wrong" as opposed to "Americans do it wrong!", there'd probably be less defensiveness, less snideness, less "typical American can't read", etc.
Look, I'm an American, and having lived elsewhere, I've been bitten many a time by this kind of thoughtless antipattern. And when I am, I don't think, "Oh my, this Web designer of uncertain origin didn't study his field," I curse, moan, and wail, "Stupid bleeping Americans have failed again to understand the complexity of their world!" I don't know where you're from, obviously, but having grown up in Indiana, I'm all…
"I'm all too aware of the oblivious American nature"
Correct, but it's only somewhat less parochial to assume that one's own country is uniquely oblivious to the rest of the world than to be oblivious to the rest of the world. After all, you were the first person in the thread to start pointing out how sites from other countries around the world fail in their own ways.
The simple truth is that without being whapped in the face by alternate standards for things like address formats, people assume everyone else does things their way. That a Pole runs into this much more quickly than an American is a natural consequence of living in a smaller and less populous country with many nearby neighbors.
"As far as I'm concerned, the defensiveness here is good ol' American exceptionalism at work"
Please! I've dealt with too many people from other countries to buy that. When "outsiders" start criticizing people who identify with any nationality based on their nationality, those people usually react with defensiveness and hostility. Part of dealing with people from other countries is learning how not to provoke such reactions.
Re: Dear American Website Owner
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely — which is I would recommend providing multi-line edit boxes for addresses. That way you can enter your address any way you see fit. You really know best how to address mail so that it gets to you, why would I want to pretend I know better?
So you have a strong AI doing natural-language parsing to figure out from that freeform address whether you need to charge sales tax/VAT? If you're doing business across state/province or national borders, getting that structured address data (and getting it right) can be awfully important.
Seems like the easiest solution would be for web developers to show the address in their country's format, if their customer is from their country, and to show a textarea box for anyone else.
Re: Dear American Website Owner
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's an HTML element then you can click it to give it focus then start typing the name of option you wish to select.
But it would be easier for the customer if the website guessed from the customer's IP address which country they were in, and put it at the top of the list (as well as in its normal position).
My favourite are the dropdowns that place "popular" countries at the top. This means that if I scroll through the list then my country may or may not be where I expect it based on how the developer was feeling that day.