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POIs an autocomplete text box for entering addresses a good idea?
 

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  1. POIs an autocomplete text box for entering addresses a good idea?
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    <p>Entering my address via a traditional form drives me crazy:</p> <ul> <li>Why do I have to enter my city, state, <strong>and</strong> zip code when my city and state can be inferred from my zip code?</li> <li>Choosing your state from a dropdown list is a pain in the ass -- often you can't tab into it, you have to use the mouse, etc.</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/7404/traditionaladdressform.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">alt text http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/7404/traditionaladdressform.png</a></p> <p>Because I find this process so repulsive, when I designed my online store (<a href="https://bombsheets.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">bombsheets.com</a>), I decided to build an auto-complete widget for addresses. As you type, we try to geocode your address (via Google Maps):</p> <p><a href="http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/9333/addressautocomplete.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">alt text http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/9333/addressautocomplete.png</a></p> <p>In the best case, this works really well. If your address is "120 W 45th St, New York, NY 10036, USA", you can enter it by typing something as short as "120 w 45th st, nyc".</p> <p>However, as far as I know, we're the only online store that uses this interface. Rather than pat myself on the back for being such a genius, I'm curious whether its lack of use means that this idea is somehow flawed. A few potential issues:</p> <ol> <li>Too foreign / unfamiliar. Customers are used to the old form, and switching things up on them is confusing.</li> <li>You have to enter your apartment / floor number / whatever in a different field. This is confusing.</li> <li>When our store blows up (good problem to have), we'll be hitting Google with too many Geocode requests for this to scale.</li> <li><strong>EDIT:</strong> This won't work for (the ~5% of) users with javascript disabled.</li> <li>There's no significant issue here and this interface is the future. (This isn't so outlandish since, for example, many online stores force you to enter both your credit card number and your credit card type, when the latter is inferrable from the former).</li> </ol> <p>Anyway, basically I'm curious if this is an area in which I should be trying to innovate, or whether I should just use the traditional approach. (Thoughts about improving the usability of this new approach are of course appreciated as well).</p>
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    1. USMatt
    1. USTom Lehman
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      1. USWayne Koorts
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    1. COThis should probably be marked Community Wiki.
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      1. USWayne Koorts
    2. COWow, the US is so backward. Here in the UK, it's common practice to only fill in the postcode (zip) and then use that to autofill the rest of the address.
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      1. USDaniel Roseman
    3. COHow well does this work on mobile?
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      1. USMichael
 

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