"This product cannot be shipped to your location"

Then why show it to me at all?

[buckworks]

I just had a frustrating experience while shopping on a US site where I have bought many things in the past.

I searched for products, browsed through the results, so far so good.

But when I spotted an item I liked and clicked for details I was greeted with a message that they wouldn't ship it to my location.

"This item is currently not available to be shipped to your location. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Um, Dear Retailer, if (1) you can tell where I'm located, and (2) you won't / can't ship this particular item there, it would be a lot better user experience if you suppressed it from the search results so I didn't see it at all.

Don't show me things that you aren't willing to sell me!

Yeesh.

[lucy24]

How do they know where you want it shipped to before you've started filling out forms? You might be buying it as a present to be shipped to your mother. So "your area" really has nothing to do with it.

Besides, don't you live somewhere in the wilds of Manitoba? I'm surprised anyone ships there :)

[dpd1]

Was it an unusual size or length? Or maybe something with potential customs issues? Regions can make a difference in that, but typically not much in North America. Unless you filled out the info, I don't know how they would know. But if that is the case, then there's not much else they could do... other than post a giant list of places next to the product.

[buckworks]

might be buying it as a present

That too. I have a friend in New York who sometimes relays parcels to me and I could not have done that. I was blocked from even putting the item in the cart.

unusual size or length

Weight would be less than a pound, bulk less than the size of a shoebox. It could easily have fit into the same package as the item I did end up buying.

wilds of Manitoba

I'm so far in the boondocks that I'd have to drive two hours if I got a craving for a Big Mac. But couriers deliver to my doorstep and we have a great local post office.

My point remains ... if their geolocation can block me from putting the item into my cart, their geolocation could suppress the item from my search results in the first place. This is a case of techies just not thinking about what the shopping experience is like from the user's end.

[g1smd]

What if you had arrived at that product page from a Google search?

[lucy24]

But seriously ... why don't you write to the site and say what you've said here? That's assuming for the sake of discussion that they're interested in improving the user experience. After all, stranger things have happened. Not long ago I sent in a simple typo report to a fairly large site, and was rewarded with a coupon ... for something I could actually use. :) OK, it was a Canadian site. They do things differently there.

[buckworks]

write to the site

Yes. I tell the story here because ecommerce developers everywhere could use reminding that poorly-thought-out technical tricks can degrade the shopping experience.

An annoyed or frustrated user is a lot less likely to be a profitable shopper.

What if you had arrived at that product page from a Google search?

Encountering the same message when coming directly from a Google search would have been disappointing but not annoying.

[nico617]

Depends on the companies fraud settings. Many companies miss out on tons of revenue based on rules and filters they have setup across the board. It doesn't matter to them that you could be valid customer, to them it's not worth the risk. Without knowing much about the product, the amount etc etc it's hard to tell you why exactly, but that's my guess. Many times, if a merchant has been burned so many times or has an amateur risk management team, this is what happens unfortunately.

[tangor]

The more successful eCommerce sites ask for your location (zip code, or example) first, then they know what to show. Short of something like that, the location might not be revealed until the shopping cart is accessed. Of course an IP lookup can help...

[Swanny007]

What's worse is Amazon, who lets me add all sorts of stuff to my cart, and when I got to checkout they then tell me they can't ship every item to me, only some (I'm not in the US).

[piatkow]

What's worse is Amazon, who lets me add all sorts of stuff to my cart, and when I got to checkout they then tell me they can't ship every item to me, only some (I'm not in the US).

How are they to know where you want the goods shipped to until you get to the checkout? You could be planning to have the items gift wrapped and delivered to somebody as a present.

[Swanny007]

How are they to know where you want the goods shipped to until you get to the checkout?

Because I'm logged in and I only have one address.

[lucy24]

Because I'm logged in and I only have one address.

How do they know that you will never, ever order a present to be shipped to your mother who lives at the other end of the country? It isn't where you are now, it's where the package is to be shipped.

:: pause to think about what I would want ::

When you first arrive at a site with limits on shipping to your area, they could put up an alert saying "We will not be able to ship to your area. Do you want to continue?" and maybe a supplementary option to check shipping to specific areas. It's no use saying "Yeah, yeah, never mind, I'm buying it for my mother in Aruba" if it later turns out they also don't ship to the Caribbean.

otoh, your location is important if they're not allowed to sell to your area, independent of physical shipping.

:: looking irritably at NFB, which inexplicably won't let me watch one particular documentary ::

I'd have to drive two hours

You have two hours' worth of drivable roads? How effete :)

[piatkow]

ever order a present to be shipped to your mother who lives at the other end of the country?

I did every time she told me that there was an old film that she liked re-issued on DVD!

When I taught database design for a major consultancy I used to remind students of Amazon's ability to despatch your Christmas present list so that they didn't do things like hard coding an inability to mail to alternative addresses.

[blend27]

because ecommerce developers everywhere could use reminding that poorly-thought-out technical tricks can degrade the shopping experience

7 Years as a developer/white hat seo/ecom-mentor for this SMB site, authority site in the niche(domain name is 18 y.o., lots of content, over 6000 inbound links to inner pages), did everything I could to keep it in top 10. I go on vacation for 3 weeks, customer decides that they want to switch to 29.95 service, they(customer) flip the switch on DNS Level with the help of new Ecom-Template-Builder-MobileFirst-Responsive-Kakamimia-BoomShaKaLaKa-LargeFontsForAll marketing monkey.

All URLs redirect >> different domain(301 to root/not-found.html) >> to 404 not [root...] = double redirect. Talinkg about killing the site, hah..

Boom.....

On top of that >> Add to Cart >> Please enter your Billing ZIP Code ... >>> We do not Ship to ZipCode You have entered.

The owner did over 120K in sales last year to Canada, Japan and several EU Countries... Goog/Bing Serp still has site links