Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

[entrepre7]

Under customer fields had the State/Province required but the Other State/Province as optional. It shows in italic but is acting as required. In the settings section under customer fields only see State/Province and not Other State/Province. Looks like the State/Province is overriding the other state/Province. 60% of my business is international and I sell to many different countries. Some addresses just don't have everything.

Is there a way to have two customer field formats? One for us and one international?

[entrepre7]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

Can someone at miva please help me here. I have contacted support with no response. My international customers are emailing me because the "other state/province" is in italics and says optional. But when they leave it blank they cannot checkout. Under the admin customer fields there is NO place for me to make it required/optional.

[Jim McCormick]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

I'm sorry but I cannot find any open tickets for you. Can you private message me the ticket number?

I also went through checkout on decorativepaintingbookstore.com and left the state option to 'Outside US' without putting anything in the 'Other State/Province' field and got an error I would expect to see, 'One or more required fields were not filled out correctly' with 'Other State/Province' highlighted in red.

[entrepre7]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

I'm sorry but I cannot find any open tickets for you. Can you private message me the ticket number?

I also went through checkout on decorativepaintingbookstore.com and left the state option to 'Outside US' without putting anything in the 'Other State/Province' field and got an error I would expect to see, 'One or more required fields were not filled out correctly' with 'Other State/Province' highlighted in red.

Checked and don't see it. Should I send another?

Don't understand why you would expect Other State/Province to show an error when it should be optional. Had set it as optional and it shows as optional. But someone has removed the control of that field from the admin panel.

Picture below.

Shows in checkout as:

Bold = Required
Italic = Optional

State/Province:

Other State/Province: - (does not allow optional when outside us is chosen)

customerfields.jpg

[Jim McCormick]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

I had to double check with our developers but we've never had a separate control for the Other State/Province option. Those two fields work together and there has to be a non-empty value in one of them. Setting the State drop down to Outside US you are then required to enter a value in the Other State/Province option. If you need to make Other State/Province optional you'll have to set the State/Province field to optional.

[entrepre7]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

Thanks Jim. Charlene helped me yesterday so that my Other is now optional for international customers too. There are countries that don't use states or postal codes. It would be great if miva could look into making checkouts even more international address friendly.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

It would be great if miva could look into making checkouts even more international address friendly.

That's on my list of things to look at this year, can you shoot me an email with your thoughts on what's needed?

[skepticwebguy]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

I too have international customers. I also use PayPal Express Checkout. I have State/Province set as a required field. I also have "Use Customer's PayPal Shipping Address for Miva Merchant Orders" checked in my PayPal Express Checkout settings. This makes editing address info impossible once PayPal passes customers back to our store to complete checkout. This feature works totally brilliantly for most customers. However, it causes issues for international customers wanting to use PayPal checkout when they don't have a State/Province.

Recently, a customer from Sweden said that he was unable to checkout using PayPal Express Checkout because his PayPal account doesn't give him the option of a State/Province. So, when PayPal Express Checkout sends him back to our store, and his address auto-populates in the customer shi to/bill to fields, the "Other State/Province" field (which is required for all international orders) is blank AND greyed out. So, the Swedish customer cannot complete the required "Other State/Province" field and complete the checkout process. He's effectively stuck with no way to complete checkout.

I plan on calling PayPal Integration Team on Monday to see if they have a solution. I'm thinking that having "Use Customer's PayPal Shipping Address for Miva Merchant Orders" checked in my PayPal Express Checkout settings is part of the issue — though that feature, as I said earlier, is totally brilliant for most customers. However, in this case, there needs to be a workaround for my Swedish customer who wants to use PayPal to checkout. He could use our regular secure checkout, and simply enter anything in the "Other State/Province" field, but this is often confusing to people even when I include a note to explain why they must put something in that field if they live outside the US.

I note on the OCST page that there is a "PayPal Disable Address Control" tab with some javascript that disables editing customer fields once PayPal passes the customer back to our store to complete checkout. Perhaps disabling the ShipState elements in the javascript would allow the "Other State/Province" field to be edited even after the customer is passed back to our store from PayPal. Though, I don't want to change this javascript until I speak with the PayPal Integration Team on Monday.

I don't want to make State/Province optional for everyone, because, in the past, we've run into problems with US customers leaving that field blank. And, most of our customer are from the US.

That said, I'm curious to know what solution(s) Miva is working on to make checkout more user-friendly for international customers?

[Jim McCormick]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

I too have international customers. I also use PayPal Express Checkout. I have State/Province set as a required field. I also have "Use Customer's PayPal Shipping Address for Miva Merchant Orders" checked in my PayPal Express Checkout settings. This makes editing address info impossible once PayPal passes customers back to our store to complete checkout. This feature works totally brilliantly for most customers. However, it causes issues for international customers wanting to use PayPal checkout when they don't have a State/Province.

Recently, a customer from Sweden said that he was unable to checkout using PayPal Express Checkout because his PayPal account doesn't give him the option of a State/Province. So, when PayPal Express Checkout sends him back to our store, and his address auto-populates in the customer shi to/bill to fields, the "Other State/Province" field (which is required for all international orders) is blank AND greyed out. So, the Swedish customer cannot complete the required "Other State/Province" field and complete the checkout process. He's effectively stuck with no way to complete checkout.

I plan on calling PayPal Integration Team on Monday to see if they have a solution. I'm thinking that having "Use Customer's PayPal Shipping Address for Miva Merchant Orders" checked in my PayPal Express Checkout settings is part of the issue — though that feature, as I said earlier, is totally brilliant for most customers. However, in this case, there needs to be a workaround for my Swedish customer who wants to use PayPal to checkout. He could use our regular secure checkout, and simply enter anything in the "Other State/Province" field, but this is often confusing to people even when I include a note to explain why they must put something in that field if they live outside the US.

I note on the OCST page that there is a "PayPal Disable Address Control" tab with some javascript that disables editing customer fields once PayPal passes the customer back to our store to complete checkout. Perhaps disabling the ShipState elements in the javascript would allow the "Other State/Province" field to be edited even after the customer is passed back to our store from PayPal. Though, I don't want to change this javascript until I speak with the PayPal Integration Team on Monday.

I don't want to make State/Province optional for everyone, because, in the past, we've run into problems with US customers leaving that field blank. And, most of our customer are from the US.

That said, I'm curious to know what solution(s) Miva is working on to make checkout more user-friendly for international customers?

You have a couple of options to make the address editable. The first would be to go into your OCST page and unassign the PayPal Disable Address Control item. This would make the entire address field editable. The second would be to remove the lines of code to allow just that state field to be editable. To do that you'll need to click on the PayPal Disable Address Control tab in OCST and remove;

<input type="hidden" name="ShipState" 		value="&mvte:global:ShipState;">
<input type="hidden" name="BillState" 		value="&mvte:global:BillState;">

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

That's on my list of things to look at this year, can you shoot me an email with your thoughts on what's needed?

As part of our Optimal Checkout service, we do one of two things:

Place Country first, and if US selected use Zip and State drop down). If not, use Postal Code and Province/Region/State.

[skepticwebguy]

Re: Other State/Province settings in customer fields section missing?

You have a couple of options to make the address editable. The first would be to go into your OCST page and unassign the PayPal Disable Address Control item. This would make the entire address field editable. The second would be to remove the lines of code to allow just that state field to be editable. To do that you'll need to click on the PayPal Disable Address Control tab in OCST and remove;

<input type="hidden" name="ShipState"         value="&mvte:global:ShipState;">
<input type="hidden" name="BillState"         value="&mvte:global:BillState;">

Do I also need to remove these lines of javascript?:

(document.forms[form_loop].elements[elems].name == "ShipState")       ||
(document.forms[form_loop].elements[elems].name == "BillState")       ||

[/QUOTE]