This failed when I put in an australian postal code.
Put the zip code first
31–40 of 330 posts
Re: Put the zip code first
#32I definitely agree in principle. But - without doxxing myself - I input my zip and the city is not correct. It’s a very close neighboring suburb (where the boundaries are definitely blurry) but it’s not the city on all the legal documents for my current house.
Legal address doesn't matter for mail, and all of this stuff is about mail/shipping. This includes billing addresses.
I would have assumed that you knew that. I know people whose ZIP code belongs to a neighboring town (because mail works that way) and it basically becomes their de-facto address.
Re: Put the zip code first
#33Ok but that only fetches the codes from the US, so now a non-US resident will start with their zip code and end up with random ass place on the other side of the globe. Now not only I still have to fill in the fields, but also clear them first.
Obviously put country first, then whatever the equivalent of a ZIP code is second. In the UK, a post code gets you down to around 15-16 delivery addresses on average. No-one there really _ever_ needs to type an address.
Yeah but, the article was specifically saying that you don't need to put in country because you can look it up by ZIP. That's obviously wrong, but apparently not to the author of the website.
Re: Put the zip code first
#34My zip covers two cities, each has a similar street name; 5-digits isn't enough.
I've encountered websites that take the zip and won't let me change the wrongly-assumed city
Re: Put the zip code first
#35It doesn't take long to type your address. Plus password managers or keyboards often auto fill it. It's not that deep.
Re: Put the zip code first
#36I guess a better proposal would be:
- Put the country first
- Put the zip code second
Re: Put the zip code first
#37> From those 5 characters you can determine the city, the state, and the country
False. Many zip codes include more than one city, and some even cross multiple states. And you can't always tell the difference between codes from different countries. Now you're not just instantly filling the rest of the form, you're implementing fancy multi-country filtering logic, editable drop downs, etc. Given the obvious incompetence of the people implementing most web forms, you're asking for disaster here.
Instead, learn to use your browser's autofill feature, and design your sites with it in mind. If you do it right the user literally doesn't have to type a single character. That's even better than typing a numeric code. Sadly even this seems beyond the abilities of the people who implement web forms.
Re: Put the zip code first
#38The kind of takes that promote the stereotypes of self-centered americans.
Re: Put the zip code first
#39Some zip codes cover multiple cities.
A few cover multiple states.
See: https://peter-horton.com/2022/12/30/zip-codes-zctas-and-zcta...
Re: Put the zip code first
#40Related, on the country drop-down front: please put the United States (or whatever your customers' main country is) at the top. You can probably tell I want the US from a combination of, you know, 99% of your sales being to the US and my language being set to English. And, sure, put Canada and even the UK next to it. Go wild, have the top ten English-speaking countries there if you like! It makes things so much easie…
This generates a really annoying features with some browsers. Suppose I want to select "United Kingdom". I open the drop-down and there are all the countries in alphabetical order, plus "United States" at the top of the list. I hit the 'U' key. It does not take me to the alphabetically listed countries beginning with 'U', it takes me to the "United States" entry at the top of the list. I might be able to type 'U-N-I-T-E-D-K' and get to the "United Kingdom" entry, but there are browsers where that does not work. (Nor does repeatedly hitting 'U' bring me to the later 'U' entries.)