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I have a form where someone would fill out an address for someone, but the form isn't the most efficient to use because eventually a state and a country are a required selection (assuming that the country selected has states to begin with).

Now usually, a country is listed last, so when I and other users tab from the City drop down, you naturally expect to enter a state, so (since I usually use Florida to test with) get the Falkland Islands in the country drop down and have to click on it and re-select the United States, and move onto State then. Below I have a screenshot of the form, to hopefully explain better what I mean:

enter image description here

What would be a better way to order this form as to not cause confusion when being filled out?

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2 Answers 2

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If the address fields are dynamic based on what country you select then I would lead with the personal details fields (name, company, email, phone), and then the country, then the other address fields.

It makes sense to lead with country if that determines which address fields show/hide.

When the country is changed the address fields below would reload based on the selected country. For example if you switched between USA and UK, State might change to County, and ZIP might change to Post code.

Try to retain the entered details if possibly useful e.g. retain entered zip in postcode. This is when a user tries to fill it out then realizing the country selected is wrong. It would be annoying if all data has to be entered again.

Example

enter image description here

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  • This makes the most sense to me, simply asking for the country earlier takes it out of the flow enough for the rest to be easy for tab and type users, thank you!
    – Brian Leishman
    Apr 26, 2016 at 13:41
  • Is there an opportunity to be even more intuitive and preselect the county based off the IP address? Won't give you 100% accuracy but will make the journey smoother for the vast majority of users.
    – Midas
    Apr 26, 2016 at 14:42
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According to me, the order for the country should always be:

  1. Country
  2. State
  3. City

Because state and city selection is dependent upon the country. The state field should become visible only if the selected country has states, like USA. If user selects UK, only the field for city should be available.

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  • The UK has counties, not quite equivalent but not dissimilar.
    – Midas
    Apr 26, 2016 at 15:15

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