Dustin Curtis asks rhetorically:
Why does every store make me enter my zip code? It's easy to get that from the USPS with my address/state.He's right of course, but this raises the question: what's the best way to solicit someone's address? Should we just remove the zip code field from the standard address form?
We can do better. For example, my country must be USA if my city is New York and my state is NY. Furthermore, I should be able to specify both my state and city with "New York City" (there aren't any other New York Cities in the US) -- or maybe just "nyc".
However, unlike inferring zip code from address and state (which always works), the heuristics described above may or may not work depending on the address. Also, there are probably other heuristics that I'm excluding (for example, could I leave off the "west" in the address? Not in this case, but maybe sometimes).
Hmmmm, if only there were some website that knew all these heuristics and could tell you with certainty whether any given string (e.g., "120 west 45th st, nyc") uniquely identifies a single address. If only this magical website had an API!
Given that we can use Google Maps to identify addresses for us, I think the optimal address form looks like this:
You enter your full address (just as you would into Google Maps), and the form offers you suggestions (by talking to Google Maps) as you type. This is exactly what I implemented on BombSheets.com (try entering your address in the "Billing address" field).
Here's how one would enter the same address in the form above (120 west 45th street, New York, NY 10036) into the billing address field on BombSheets:
What an easy and fun way to buy bed sheets online, right?
Of course, Google limits you to 15,000 geocode requests per day, so this exact solution wouldn't scale for a site like Amazon, but I still think the overall approach is the future.
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