cutomers from usa and canada or other countries?

[blackhorse]

If the ecommerce site customers are only from usa or canada, we can preset the state/province drop down menu (we can have a database table to hold th state/province information, this will also be used such as calcuate tax for different states etc., more control and accurate than the free text input state or province name).

But if the ecommerce site has customers from other countries, so the province/state needs to be a free text input field.

But in my project's case, the customers are 95% from usa or canada, 5% from other countries. I don't want to lose the control and easy to use of the "preset state/province drop down menu of us states and canada province", but at the same time, I should also allow the other countries customers too.

Plus, I don't want to make the registration process even a little more difficult, such as to have two tiers one for usa/canada, one for others.

In the past, I chose free input text approach for state and province so it will allow other countries' customers to register, even most of the customers are from usa/canada.

How do you handle it?

Thanks!

[Roger_Ramjet]

The only sensible way to handle this is for the user to first select the country and to then adapt the rest of the address fields accordingly. Provide the select when it is USA or Canada and text boxes when it is other. Most addresses in the UK no longer include the county, and in Germany they never include the state. UK post codes are also alpha-numeric with a gap (SW3 8A😎, unlike zip codes in US which are all numeric.