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Redesigning the country selector

baymard.com

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Re: Redesigning the country selector

#111

Post by nandemo »

mynegation wrote: post #16

My main complaint about old country pickers and this one is non-prioritization of countries in the list. Yes, I understand that this may be a sensitive issue, but how much likely your customer is going to be from Canada than from Cameroon. Or if I start typing 'CA' in this selector, I get American Samoa and Antarctica before Canada! Let alone my old acquaintances Cambodia and Cameroon. Same for Russia - you get Aruba…

I might be wrong, but I think the only place that suggestion would be considered "non-PC" is North America.

Assuming the majority of your website's users come from a few countries, the simple solution is to have those countries on the top of the list, followed by the rest of the country in alphabetical order.

If Afghanistan is on the top of your list, you'll probably doing something wrong (unless you're UN or something agency like that).

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#112

Post by benjoffe »

afterburner wrote: post #92
raldi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full name is the United Kingdom of Great Br ITA in and Northern Ireland.

Wow, I think this autocomplete is too smart for its own good.

Precisely, I can't think of any situation where a user would search for a substring of a single word in the country name. If there is some edge-case where the first letter or so can be omitted that should be handled with the alternate-spellings feature.

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#113

Post by njharman »

rapind wrote: post #29

I have to ask. Is it common for anyone to type their country starting with characters inside of the word? I.e. instead of typing "can" for canada, would you type "ada" or something similarly fuzzy? I personally type "can", and if Canada is not the first result I consider it's usability inferior to a standard drop-down.

"Amer" for "United States of America"

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#114

Post by vacri »

raldi wrote: post #87
steadicat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typed 'ita' and the first option was 'United Kingdom'.

The full name is the United Kingdom of Great Br ITA in and Northern Ireland.

That's not good enough to explain why United Kingdom (or "the united kingdom of greAt britAin And northern ireland") sits up near the top when you type in 'A'. Who the hell formally refers to the UK with any word starting with 'A'? Anyone claiming to be from 'Albion' in a web form is just intentionally being difficult...

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#115

Post by gurkendoktor »

troyjfarrell wrote: post #15

This can be diplomatically difficult. The linked implementation only lists Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China". I could see this being interpreted in many different ways, with either side being insulted. (Maybe that's best.)

If 'Hong Kong' can stand on its own in the ISO list, I really can't see the PRC being insulted by calling 'Taiwan', well, 'Taiwan'.

It seems the dropdown here is just a harmless tech demo based on ISO, but this is such a common mistake. Even the rails/country_select thingie on GitHub has the same trap included. Use it and you are bound to make Taiwanese users unhappy, which already happened to Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, ...

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#116

Post by calbear81 »

mynegation wrote: post #16

My main complaint about old country pickers and this one is non-prioritization of countries in the list. Yes, I understand that this may be a sensitive issue, but how much likely your customer is going to be from Canada than from Cameroon. Or if I start typing 'CA' in this selector, I get American Samoa and Antarctica before Canada! Let alone my old acquaintances Cambodia and Cameroon. Same for Russia - you get Aruba…

I tend to agree with the sentiment that prioritization makes the list work better for the 80% of users but may make it seem less intuitive for the 20% that don't live in your prioritized group.

We're thinking of taking a similar approach to the way we display matching city names in an autocomplete input box. We have data on which matches are larger cities and we may hide some search results when there is a broad match based on the difference in size between the city matches.

For example, if you type in "Vancouver", there is a much higher likelihood you mean "Vancouver, BC" than "Vancouver, WA" due to the significant difference in the sizes of the cities and their "importance". In traditional lists, both would be listed with Vancouver, BC on top. We're thinking of hiding "Vancouver, WA" unless the user continues to refine their input to "Vancouver, W" then "Vancouver, WA" becomes the most relevant result.

Something similar could be applied here. Type in "Ca" and Canada should be the option shown until you add a "m" to make "Cam" then you will most likely show both Cambodia and Cameroon if their relative importance is too close to pick a clear top match.

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#117

Post by Gormo »

samgro wrote: post #82
mmastrac wrote: post #11

While this has a nice UI, it suffers from a ranking system that fails to weight prefixes correctly. For those of us in Canada, typing "ca" should probably rank countries that start with the "ca" prefix first, followed by countries that have a word that starts with "ca", finally followed by countries that just happen to contain "ca". I don't see much use in showing "United States" as the first match for a user who has…

Can anyone explain why 'United States' could possibly be an autocomplete result for 'CA'? I am staring at United States and just can't see a 'C' anywhere... have I totally lost it?

For the same reason 'sco' and 'eng' both autocomplete to 'United Kingdom'.

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#118

Post by Gormo »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #115
troyjfarrell wrote: post #15

This can be diplomatically difficult. The linked implementation only lists Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China". I could see this being interpreted in many different ways, with either side being insulted. (Maybe that's best.)

If 'Hong Kong' can stand on its own in the ISO list, I really can't see the PRC being insulted by calling 'Taiwan', well, 'Taiwan'. It seems the dropdown here is just a harmless tech demo based on ISO, but this is such a common mistake. Even the rails/country_select thingie on GitHub has the same trap included. Use it and you are bound to make Taiwanese users unhappy, which already happened to Facebook, Twitter, Goog…

The PRC claims Taiwan as an integral part of China. But Hong Kong is a 'special administrative region', i.e. an autonomous jurisdiction for which China essentially took over as the colonial power.

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#119

Post by ehxor »

Most Canadians I know are used to hitting 'c' three times. It skips you past Cameroon and Cambodia and selects Canada. I suspect people from other countries behave similarly?

This totally breaks that expected behavior for me. Maybe it should, maybe "it's time" for that.

I suppose I can get similar behavior with this by typing "ada".

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#120

Post by mooism2 »

raldi wrote: post #87
steadicat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typed 'ita' and the first option was 'United Kingdom'.

The full name is the United Kingdom of Great Br ITA in and Northern Ireland.

But still, Italy should come before the UK for "ita", except maybe if geoip lookup places you in the UK.
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