Customer's Country of Origin

[bodge]

Sorry to jump straight in. I've only recently downloaded and configured oscommerce, so I'm a newbie.

 

Putting my "custeromer hat" on, things that "upset" me as a "customer" (ie pretend I'm visiting your store and want to buy something), include the customer information, especially address.

 

When you invite the potential new customer: "Or would you prefer to create an account?", why not offer:

"Create new account based in [united Kingdom]" using a drop down list of countries.

 

Why should you? - what benefit would this offer:

 

a] I may decide to take payments from (and deliver to) only European customers, so why would I want to register a customer that lives in Azerbijain !?

 

b] We don't have "States" in the UK. Looking at various successful e-commerce sites, including ebay and Amazon, a reasonably sensible way of asking for address (for UK customers) is:

 

Address Line 1:

Address Line 2: - not mandetory

Town/City:

County:

Postcode:

(Country)

 

Addresses vary in exact format around the country. But this template works for everyone.

Lets look at a UK example of a "Shire" county:

 

Address Line 1: 123 Example Road

Address Line 2: Wombwell

Town/City: Barnsley

County: South Yorkshire

Postcode: S73 9ZZ

(Country)

 

Let's look at a UK metropolitan district example:

 

Address Line 1: 123 Example Road

Address Line 2: Tooting Bec

Town/City: London

County:

Postcode: SW17 9ZZ

(Country)

 

 

This then leaves County as non-mandetory.

The owner of this property being a Londoner may decide to Just call they area Tooting (rather than specifying Tooting Broadway or Tooting Bec). Also, many Londoners (and also postcoding systems) would leave out the area all together, as most Londoners (and all London postmen) would know that SW17 is Tooting. In fact, a lookup program from the Post Office would just quote the No and Street name, "London" and the postcode - liske this:

 

Address Line 1: 123 Example Road

Address Line 2:

Town/City: London

County:

Postcode: SW17 9ZZ

(Country)

 

If somebody lived in flats, they may also want an extra line, but really the flat number could be put on line one - e.g.

 

Address Line 1: Flat 2a, 123 Example Road

Address Line 2:

Town/City: London

County:

Postcode: SW17 9ZZ

(Country)

 

Other British cities (eg Glasgow in Scotland) has it's own way of writing flat numbers and street numbers:

 

1/17 Example Road (or was it 17/1 Example Road - I can't remember. However I'm not a postman !!).

 

I'd personally set the UK template as:

 

Address Line 1: Mandetory

Address Line 2:

Address Line 3:

Address Line 4:

Postcode: Mandetory

 

 

So how does all this relate to oscommerce? Well, if you start confusing "potential" customers with problems like "State", they become "might have been" customers !! Any UK postman should be able to deliver using a name, number and streetname plus postcode. All the rest is frills and vanity these days.

 

So ... if you just called prompted as above (and mapped the data fields into the appropriate slots on the mysql database:

Street Address:

Suburb:

City:

State/Province:

Post Code / zip code:

and country -> country, then everybody would be happy !!

 

Likewise, we awkward British use a different date format:

07/02/2007 is the 7th February 2007

or we could accept the format:

07/FEB/2007

 

SO .... if before we create an account, we asked for which country, we could get the templates correct.

 

Other European countries may favour a date format: YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY.MM.DD

2003.02.04 - ie the 4th February 2003

 

Furthemore, I really question wisdom of asking for a date of birth (and even more so for making it mandetory).

 

If you are really worried that the user, and your own e-commerce site may be confusing John Smith (aged 40) with his dad John Smith (aged 70) who lives at the same address, then I guess there might be a feeble reason for asking for YEAR OF BIRTH.

 

However, with so much financial and banking fraud on the go these days, I think I'd walk away from any site DEMANDING my date of birth. I could go online now and buy a 50,000 pound diamond ring, and slap my credit card down WITHOUT revealing my date of birth. (Sorry folks, my credit card really wouldn't stretch that far !!). So why, if I have gone online to buy a pencil, a ruler and a rubber ("eraser" for you Americans) should I be forced to declare my date of birth.

 

There may be cultural differences coming out here. Maybe in the USA it would be quite normal. But can you not see what I am saying about asking for country of origin of the potential new customer first, and then supplying the most appropriate template, and somehow marrying the data provided with the standard database model.

 

I think that's enough for now !! :)

[spax]

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2816

 

Nuff said! :P