It’s always the little things that can make a large impact…

We’ve seen this come up a few times this week in emails and support requests. Merchants are seeing Alerts in their ShopSite backoffice about invalid zip codes for international customers (Canada, Europe, etc…) when their store uses a real-time shipping option like UPS or FedEx.

The orders are eventually placed, but our clients want to know why the errors are occurring in the first place.

Assuming:

• The customer entered a valid zip/postal code for their country

-and-

• The real-time shipper will ship to that postal code

There is a checkbox in ShopSite that is the most likely culprit.

Commerce Setup -> Order System -> Shopping Cart

Country Above Zip Checkbox

The last option “Display Country above Zip/Postal Code”. That’s the one.

If it’s not checked, the country dropdown appears *below* the zip/postal code text box. It may not sound like a big deal, but it can cause many headaches for your shoppers. Why?

Because when a shopper enters a zip code, and clicks off of that text box, ShopSite automatically performs a recalc in the cart. The recalc happens instantly.

Three things can happen at this point:

1. The customer starts to change the country dropdown, and then the screen refreshes switching it back to the default country and providing them with an error (as the recalc happened with the default country selected).

2. The customer is slow, does not get the country dropdown, and an error comes back about the zip code being wrong (as the default “United States” country was set).

3. If you’re using version 11 SP2 or higher, and have the splash “processing” graphic enabled, the screen will dim, it will say processing, and the error will come back about an invalid zip code (as the default “United States” country was set).

…

So, if you offer international shipping, make sure this checkbox is checked in your ShopSite backoffice. It will spare your customers from confusion and inappropriate warnings, and it will make their shopping experience smoother.

It’s amazing what one little checkbox can do to an online store.