Here’s a reminder for U.S. online companies that do business with international clients.
British Columbia is a P-r-o-v-i-n-c-e.
Does that seem like a minor point? Well, those Americentric errors are killing your sales with people from the ‘outside’ world.
When they see those mistakes, your potential customers and affiliates always stop and wonder…
“Could these people really NOT know that Canada is comprised of provinces, or were they sloppy in designing their form? And if they screwed up the form because they’re sloppy, do I really want to do business with those too careless to get a basic form correct?”
As an affiliate, if I have to enter ‘B.C.’ or ‘British Columbia’ in the city form blank because the list of provinces is missing from the dropdown, I wonder if my commission check will be addressed to Penticton, Canada. While Canada Post may be able to figure that one out, I’m not keen to tempt fate or wait that much longer for a check.
If on the other hand, I’m ordering a product, I don’t bother with questions. I make the safe assumption that the shipping will get screwed up and abandon the cart immediately.
So, are you losing sales over completely avoidable errors?
Check your forms, or make sure that the person you hire to create those forms has passed Grade 4 geography. Better yet, ask them whether they have a passport that they’ve actually used.
And, if you want to make an even better first impression on your international customers, have your newly hired geography major change the box to read “Zip / Postal Code“. (Hint: it’s only called a zip code in the States.)
March 8th, 2008 at 3:54 am
As a fellow Canadian, I hear you!
As a consumer, it can be terribly disappointing. Countless times I have simply left a site extremely frustrated because I have been asked to submit “Country” which was fine. However, was then directed to submit “State”, for which there was nothing applicable to me. And I could not get past that block. The provinces were not an option at all. In fact, in one instance, I could not get out of the site without selecting something. I think I may have created a whole new province for Canada in the process.
You are quite correct in regard to the postal codes as well. And again, making sure it was quite ok for me to purchase or subscribe to something, in the end I couldn’t. My postal code was not recognized at all. After five tries, and 5 error messages, that was it for me. I don’t know how many countless subscriptions and products I have had to leave behind.
This error has to be hurting business for someone somewhere for sure.