Geolocalized Country Selection Field
We’re going to add over the week-end two new input field types: country, and date. You should upgrade any web forms currently using a standard text field for country or date to the new types.
When to Use the Country Type
Choose the country type whenever you want to show on a form a dropdown list with the 280 odd ISO country names.
Visitor Country Selected by Default
A country list field is typically used to ask the visitor about his/her country of residence. You’ve certainly already experienced the frustration of having to search for your country in a long list each time you fill out a form. At FormSmarts, we want to save time to everyone, so the visitor’s country is automatically selected by default.
That way, users only have to change the selection if the question asks them about a country different from their country of residence. For example, “Where did you travel last time you went abroad?”
Reducing the time needed to fill a form helps reduce form abandonment.
Any questions or comments? Leave a reply.
P.S. We’ll present the date type in another post.
Posted by FormSmarts on
Jul 17, 2008 at 6:19 pm in form handler.
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Tags: form handler, geolocalization, input field, web forms
6 Responses to “Geolocalized Country Selection Field”
If only your country field allowed the Optional value of No. This is a required field. I had to make my own Country field so I can require it on the form. Is this an oversight on your part?
Betsy, the notion of required field doesn’t apply in the case of a Country field because the value is always set automatically.
Posted by: The first value in your list should be something like this where the value is empty: — Please Select — Then, if the user doesn’t select a value from the list it will return a “required field” indicator. I need Country to be required. I had to create my own new field named “Country.” since I can’t use the name “Country”.
Betsy, that’s the way a required drop-down menu works. However, a country field is different. The user doesn’t have to select a value, this is done automatically by the server. Whenever you add another required field to a form, you are increasing the chance the person give up filling out the form altogether (form abandonment). So you should not ask the visitor to do what a computer can do automatically, i.e. pick a country in a list when in the huge majority of cases the user will have to select his country of residence, which can be done automatically.
Country is required for lead routing.
Betsy, the country will always be filled out and sent to you as part of the form response. So you will be able to route leads in the same way you would do if the person had to fill out a required drop-down list manually. The fact the required/optional status of a country field can’t be change doesn’t mean the value sent to you may be empty, as it would with a regular drop-down. It means a country field is always required because the server will always automatically fill it out. I hope this clarifies.
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