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Right now, on my site tindie, I have 2 sort forms next to each other (one for sorting products by price & popularity, the other for sorting items that can be shipped to your country). This just doesn't feel 'right' to me.

Any ideas on a better way of handling two different sort forms?

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Having this country filter brings up another issue.

The seller can add shipping for another country (the buyer just has to notify the seller via the product page). My initial concern is that by showing the Country filter, the user will just filter by their country, see just a few things, and think the can't purchase anything else - which isn't true. 99% of the time if they contact the Seller, the seller will add the shipping rates for that country. So then is it worth it to even show the country filter at all?

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Well the main issue is that a) you can't select both fields at once, and b) it's not really a 'sort' at all, because when you select any of the options in only displays items matching that criteria. It's a filter rather than a sort. What is it you want it to actually do? – JonW♦ Sep 6 '12 at 9:43
Yes, that is correct.. – Emile Petrone Sep 6 '12 at 10:18
You haven't really answered my question about what you actually want to do with this sort/filter, and therefore your question itself isn't going to be easy to answer. Currently the only answer would be "Change the label from 'Sort By' to 'Filter By' " and that would be correct, but I sense that wouldn't be any help to you, but I'm not sure what you actually do want this form to be doing. Why do you want a better way to handle these fields? What is the problem you're trying to solve? – JonW♦ Sep 6 '12 at 10:34
Ah sorry about that. The sort for Popularity/Prices is just a sort. The Shipping by Country is a filter. Two different problems I'm trying to cram into the same area on the page - which I think is what you are getting at (and probably why it feels wrong). – Emile Petrone Sep 6 '12 at 10:43
By default (with no country selected) are all products visible? – Matt Obee Sep 6 '12 at 11:16
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2 Answers

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If you have products that can't be shipped to the users country, then this is more important than sorting price and popularity. Thus users of your site should actually select country first in order to sort products only available in the users country.

When this selection (filter) is done, enable the Sort By-control.

mockup

download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups

Otherwise users will want to buy products, not available in the users country if they haven't made any country specific selections.

The best way to loose a customer is to let them see and think they can buy a product and then on check out, let them know that the product is not available in the users country. Competition is just a click away!

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This brings up another issue I have which is the seller can add shipping for another country (the buyer just has to notify the seller via the product page). My initial concern is that by showing the Country filter, the user will just filter by their country, see just a few things, and think the can't purchase anything else - which isn't true. So then is it worth it to even show the country filter at all? – Emile Petrone Sep 6 '12 at 11:31
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I'd use two different elements to make a clear distinction:

  • Country filter: Use checkbox with label "Only show products available in my country". When clicked, show a text field with auto complete to choose country, a very nice example can be found at gs.statcounter.com

  • Sorting: Normal dropdown list

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