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There is a project planned to change the way we display states, but I do not have an ETA for it just yet.
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Fix Country/State order forms to be non-US-centric
I've copied this feedback from another post (https://support.ontraport.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/213089287-Can-I-just-show-the-Australian-states-on-my-ONTRApages-forms-?page=1#community_comment_360002734853) but this is actually a separate issue.
Rather than limiting states (which assumes one traffic source), Country & State should be smarter and complete, per below. Basically pick any website with an ecommerce checkout and copy what they do and it will probably be better than what's in place at present.
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Hi Frank, this is a good start. But can we make this change the states list based on which country is selected, then make the default Country then State, and pre-fill it based on GeoIP / contact record and/or URL parameters?
i.e. if I arrive at an order form from the US, it would pre-fill USA and pre-filter USA states.
If I arrive at an order form from the US, it would pre-fill USA and pre-filter USA states.
Also, "My state is not listed" doesn't really help. We need state information for successful delivery. Unless there's something I'm missing, I only see USA, Australia and South Africa.
A related issue to the above is that the states show (AU) Victoria, not Victoria, which a) you're the only website on the planet that does this so it's confusing and b) it breaks typing to select values.
Basically the whole way you've designed states and countries on forms is unusal and needs to be brought into the well-established standards that every major application on the internet, and most of the minor ones, follows. Here's Shopify for instance:
https://cl.ly/8f4d8a843a65
Also, as it's easy to get hold of the entire globe's country:state mapping, this should be loaded too.
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Moreso than just hiding states, the whole country/state thing needs to be rethought. Basically, just copy Shopify and it will work fine. Changes needed:
* A complete states list
* Country field first, then State
* Standardised naming (no conflating AU / ZA country code + state name into the listing)
* Automatic filtering of the state results list based on country
* Pre-population of country based on geoIP/contact record/URL parameter
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I'm now having to work around this by adding a "State (if Other)" field and using both. Then deal with the fallout of that.
I don't understand why I only USA, Australia & South Africa show in this list?
Further, I only discovered the other day there's a "My state is not listed" option, BUT it's never going to be discoverable by type-ahead. It should show this in the event someone types something that doesn't match.
But then where do they enter it if it doesn't match?
How do people outside the US or Australia actually use this system?
But really, the root cause (my post) should be fixed, not dodgy workarounds.
I don't really want people to have to type states in manually. I'll end up with 5 different typings for the same state, ruining any ability to segment by them (e.g. for in person event invitations).
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Any movement on this? It drives me nuts every time I see it.
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This not being fixed is becoming increasingly problematic. I'm now trying to mail merge out for print, and I have to go in and manually do two things:
* Reconcile the "State (if Other)" custom field with the built in Dropdown. And I have to rename anyone in e.g. Australia so when we mail merge it doesn't print out
First Last
123 Street Name
(AU) Queensland
to get rid of the "(AU) ".
(I don't want to not just the built in field for a bunch of reasons, although increasingly that's looking like the only option)
This is such a joke. There is no legitimate reason for this completely custom, completely user and administrator-unfriendly, completely limiting behaviour in a system designed in the last 30 years. Fix it. It's ridiculous.
Also per https://support.ontraport.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/1260801689009-States-for-all-countries that's baloney. Most countries don't use States? States, Provinces, Territories, Administrative Divisions, you name it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisions_by_country
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This is the sort of thing that should happen.
https://www.codebyamir.com/blog/populate-a-select-dropdown-list-with-json
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