Put the zip code first

mttjj

I definitely agree in principle. But - without doxxing myself - I input my zip and the city is not correct. It’s a very close neighboring suburb (where the boundaries are definitely blurry) but it’s not the city on all the legal documents for my current house.

diath

Ok but that only fetches the codes from the US, so now a non-US resident will start with their zip code and end up with random ass place on the other side of the globe. Now not only I still have to fill in the fields, but also clear them first.

stavros

So I typed my zip code and got Winsconsin, and couldn't change the country to Greece, which is what my zip code actually is for. Proposing UX improvements is great, but please don't forget the other 95% of the planet.

mikehall314

It’s easy enough to say “put the zip first because that will tell you city, state and country in one input”. What happens to customers not in the United States? They have no zip to enter. Or if they have a postal code of some stripe, it has a different format. What about folks who are in Turkmenistan, that you’re grumpy about having to scroll past? How are they signing up?

dgeiser13

Some zip codes cover multiple cities.

loloquwowndueo

US-centric. I typed a Mexico postal code (it’s five digits) and got routed to somewhere in Maine. So - yeah the whole “I can tell you’re in the US just by the zip code” premise is entirely flawed.

YokoZar

The author complains about country selector drop-downs as part of the address flow, but if you're collecting zip codes you are already assuming United States. I don't think there's a country-inferer from completely generic postal code tool out there yet, is there?

lsaferite

Unfortunately you still need country first. But past that, the point stands well. You'll need to adjust the form based on the country, obviously. For the US you can use zip-5 to prefill bunch of data and zip+4 practically fills it all out for a lot of addresses. Each country has some particular nuance though, so it's only as simple as "zip first" or "postcode first" in some locations.

talkvoix

I completely agree with the premise, but if we just ask for the ZIP code first and auto-fill the rest, how am I going to justify my 2-week sprint to build a custom, React-based, fuzzy-searchable, virtualized dropdown component for the 'State' field? Just kidding xP

conductr

I know some zips covers multiple cities. I would imagine some cross state lines in places too. Doesn’t cover multiple countries either as some have similar formats (5 digits). So there are edge cases that make this infeasible

zettabomb

I fail to see how you can claim this to work for sites which serve areas outside the United States, but have either no ZIP code, an overlapping code, or something else entirely. Germany has 5 digit PLZs, but putting some valid ones in doesn't get a result. It really seems like the author does not think about other countries. I don't disagree with reordering the entry by relevance, but you have to start with country. That can also be a nice search - it will be a very short lookup, even if you put every country name in every language. Only after that is postal code (of whatever kind - it's only ZIP in the US) relevant.

smallnix

The visit Japan website for faster customs clearing does that. Zip first with auto fill. Very nice: https://www.vjw.digital.go.jp

fenwick67

Galaxy brain: address should just be a multi-line field

altairprime

“A postal code will belong to a single city” applies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8907301

goloroden

I entered my zip code… well, wrong country: I’m living in Germany. And even if you knew that, the only thing you could have known from the zip code is the city. At least roughly, because multiple small villages share one zip code. Or, to cut it short: This doesn’t work at all on a general and global level, so I guess there’s a reason why websites do this differently…

exmadscientist

Related, on the country drop-down front: please put the United States (or whatever your customers' main country is) at the top. You can probably tell I want the US from a combination of, you know, 99% of your sales being to the US and my language being set to English. And, sure, put Canada and even the UK next to it. Go wild, have the top ten English-speaking countries there if you like! It makes things so much easier. The trick, then, is that you don't remove anything from the alphabetical list. With modern computer technology, we can have two places to find something! So if I miss your fancy shortcut, or it's not applicable to me, everything will still be in the regular old familiar place. It just works.

RASBR89

In the last couple of years in the uk, address forms ask for you street address and the rest will autocomplete from there - city, postcode. Makes things a lot easier in the way the author suggests

justaboutanyone

This failed when I put in an australian postal code.

petee

My zip covers two cities, each has a similar street name; 5-digits isn't enough. I've encountered websites that take the zip and won't let me change the wrongly-assumed city