5.1 Customer Orders Collecting Order Information
Collecting Order Information
When you’re ready to sell internationally, make sure that essential customer information doesn’t fall through the cracks. Use these tips to create clear, customer-friendly payment pages for your website:
- Label your fields as clearly as possible, and provide alternatives field names to help customers who don’t speak English (or for whom English is not their primary language). For example, “First” could be displayed as “First Name/Given Name” and “Last” as “Last Name/Family Name/ Surname”;
- Include four lines for the address field to accommodate longer international addresses;
- Add a field for “Country”;
- Insert a “Country Code” field above or beside the “Telephone Number” field;
- Ask for “State/Territory/Province,” rather than just “State”;
- Request “ZIP/Postal Code” rather than just “ZIP Code.” Also, if your system uses the “ZIP Code” entry to automatically fill in the “City” and “State” fields, you might want to offer separate fields for “ZIP Code” and “Postal Code”—many other countries use five-digit postal codes, and a postal code keyed into the “ZIP Code” field could gum up the customer’s address.
Many online vendors now offer apps that you can install for a seamless look and feel on your existing online store or website. These apps generally include information for shipping and payment, and some are available in multiple languages, allowing the buyer to choose which language appears in the app.