Customer confusion at checkout page

[balefire]

We've had a few messages from customers and it's usually the same issue. 

There's a section on the payment page, in the address field that asks for 'state' ie; England, Scotland, Wales. I suspect this is just an issue for UK customers.

This must be filled in to continue, the main issue is that there is no prompt to make sure this field is filled. Some of our customers miss this 'state' section as it's unusual for a checkout page in the UK and cannot continue. 

Is there any way to change this on the payment page?

[Twiggy]

I am so with you here - You can tell a non UK resident did this !!!! super annoying - It took me ages to get the online team aware about the postcode “gap” in the UK - It was addressed.  I agree about the state thing - very confusing as in the UK we don’t write England ans “ENG” etc and we do not write anything like the Square pop up selection. See image from your site.  (Great site by the way!). Image attached - so people can see why people find it confusing!  wait til you offer local delivery and house names ! Well done for flagging this.

UK states!?

[doc_choc]

@balefire and @Twiggy I have to a agree with you both on the use of the field State, technically they are countries, but really the use of UK does cover all countries within the UK. The Royal Mail address database for the UK does not differentiate itself into countries and sets the country as united Kingdom, so really for domestic shipping, the field 'State' is redundant and probably would be of more use to have the county in there.

It's not the end of the world but I think the more you can limit confusion, making things clearer for the user at checkout the better for all.

 

[balefire]

Thanks for the reply @Twiggy @doc_choc 

I assumed it wasn't just me, Cheers for the validation.

I know I've lost sales due to this, there have been a few instances where customers have called me and I've had to talk them through it... it's always this issue. For every customer that doesn't contact me there will be several that just give up. 

Hopefully Square will address this soon as it's been ongoing for a while now. I think even a prompt asking users to fill in the 'state' field would help - it does appear the payment page is not working if this is missed.

[doc_choc]

@balefire and @Twiggy the checkout process is almost there but its little things that can cause loss sales, it pains me when we work so hard to get them on to the site buying only to loose them, but that's sometimes just the way things go. We noticed on the mobile phone (Android, not sure about the iPhone) that when you input and search for the address at checkout that if your address falls at the bottom the list you can not scroll down to select it. Lost sales. Customers are not always that patient online, especially the younger demographic who want it there and then or else they are off to the competitor. 

We will never be able to quantify lost sales but during our busy seasons we do get a good few calls to the office and we end up taking orders over the phone as they struggle for different reasons to either understand the checkout process or the system will not allow them to place an order. So any tightening up of the process no matter how small or simple will only help.

[Twiggy]

We have lost a considerable amount of sales over the years - not only to this - but to the date format and the postcode for online. Repeat customers re order with ease online. 

[Sineaid]

Hi @balefire,

Thanks for your post, and for resurfacing this pain point. 

I can see that it has come up before, and been brought to the attention of our Square Online team. So, I'll reach out directly to see if we can prioritise a discussion around this with the UK market in mind. 

Thanks also to @Twiggy & @doc_choc for sharing your feedback, it should definitely help the case for a review of the checkout flow.