Review the countries that are at the top of the "country" dropdown in the shop

[swaldman]

Title:
Review the countries that are at the top of the "country" dropdown in the shop

Area:
Shop

Summary:
When paying by credit card in the DW shop, one specifies one's country in a drop-down. This drop-down is alphabetically sorted except for United States, which appears at the top.

Suggestion is to review which countries appear at the top.

Description:
It is fairly common for such dropdowns to promote a few most-common countries out of their alphabetical order and put them at the top of the list.

The Dreamwidth Shop does this with United States.

My suggestion is to review which countries appear at the top in this way: are there others that hold a sufficiently large proportion of the DW paid userbase to merit this treatment? I suggest that 3-5 of the most common countries should appear here, and that a separator should then be inserted in the list to make it clearer what is going on.

Poll #13459 Review the countries that are at the top of the "country" dropdown in the shop

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
23 (51.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
5 (11.1%)

(I have no opinion)
15 (33.3%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.2%)

Comments

[denise]

for context, here are our top 10 countries that payments come from, and the percentage of payments represented by transactions from that country:

+----------------------+---------+
| percentage           | country |
+----------------------+---------+
|              77.0446 | US      |
|               6.7883 | CA      |
|               6.0113 | UK      |
|               2.9109 | AU      |
|               1.0752 | NZ      |
|               0.9482 | SE      |
|               0.6554 | DE      |
|               0.3958 | SG      |
|               0.3480 | PH      |
|               0.3277 | FI      |
+----------------------+---------+

so, the US is 77% of payments, and there are only two other countries that represent more than 5% of payments (Canada and the UK). We get more payments from the city of Seattle than we do from New Zealand....

i would not be opposed to pulling out .ca and .uk, but i think any more than that and it'd get unwieldy.

[subluxate]

Holy crap, I didn't realize it was that skewed to the US.

[denise]

i think it's partially a reflection of our demographics, and partially a relic of only taking visa/mastercard/amex/discover. we could maybe add a few cards that are more well-represented outside the US, but every time i've looked into it, it turns out the processing fees would be super ridiculous, and the implementation time (in both programmer-time to do the programming, and in administrative time to identify the merchant banks that would let us get set up with those cards, handle the applications, handle the licensing, handle the tax and administrative processing, etc) wouldn't be justified given the tiny percentages we're talking. it's very much a chicken-and-egg problem.

(insert rant about paypal here.)

so, it's one of those things where every time we look at it, it's not worth it. especially since the stats are likewise very skewed US-wise, so even if we did do more work to add other payment types, the potential return is fairly minor -- there's not a huge market for those methods. it winds up making more sense to just tell people from countries where it's not that easy to get a visa/mastercard/amex/etc issued for regular use to pick up a prepaid card, which can usually be found even in countries where those cards aren't usually registered to individuals.

in short, running a worldwide business is hard. :(

[swaldman]

Interstingly, while the stats for accounts have similar high-up countries to those for number of payments, the margin by which the top ones are at the top is much less. While difficulty in paying could explain this for some nations (notably, I suspect, Japan, which is #3 on the accounts list but not top 10 in payments), it couldn't in all (e.g. Visa/Mastercard/AmEx are the standard credit cards in .uk as well).

So it seems as though there's probably a significant difference in the free:paid ratio between the US and other countries, which I find intriguing. There's probably an interesting discussion to be had (maybe somewhere else!) on why this is...

[denise]

well, also remember that specifying a country on one's profile (which is what the stats page pulls from) is optional, while specifying a country to make a payment isn't (even as the choice of whether to make that payment or not is). so there are two different data sets involved.

i do know it's hard to find even prepaid visa/mc in japan, which is probably why it's .06% of our payments...

[swaldman]

Hmm. What happens if you don't specify a country on the profile page? Do you just get omitted from the stats?

That could explain the discrepancy, then, if there's a tendency for USians to omit their country more than others.

[denise]

yup, not specifying a country on your profile just means you don't get counted in those stats. many people don't.

according to our google analytics, our visits over the last month are:

1. United States   267,438
2.  United Kingdom  28,843
3.  Canada      28,367
4.  Australia   11,850
5.  Russia      7,335
6.  Germany     6,310
7.  Philippines 4,353
8.  Sweden      2,869
9.  Singapore   2,458
10. France      2,427

but of course that's visitors, not logged-in accounts, and only counts a) people who visit at least one site-skinned page on their visit and b) haven't blocked google analytics. and the geolocation db is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

[subluxate]

It looks like the only country with relatively high representation that doesn't show as one of the top paid ones is Japan, unless I missed something. It makes sense that it ties to card use, really--and it's unfortunate that PayPal is so puritanical about things. They could get all those tasty, tasty processing fees!

Unrelatedly, every time I see your icon, I think she's in a wheelchair and get super excited.

[denise]

that is me! pic was taken at the top of the castel sant'angelo in rome, which is where we went for my 30th birthday. (i was having some angst over turning 30, and decided i wanted to do so in a place where 300 was an architectural upstart.)

i am in fact a part-time wheelchair user, although it all depends on which is worse at any given moment, the hip or the arms. the arms have been winning for a long goddamn time, alas. (i have ehlers-danlos syndrome, too! which is why i always giggle when i see your username.)

[subluxate]

From what I can tell, the view is gorgeous.

I also use a chair part time. My left shoulder sucks terribly, though, so wheeling myself for more than about fifteen feet is a Bad Idea. (Right shoulder isn't so hot, either, but at least it doesn't have nerve damage and a bunch of scar tissue in the muscles.) I've been walking a lot more over the last ten months to a year--up to seven blocks at once!--which pleases me beyond words, since I was largely bedbound in 2011. I do use my chair as a walker a lot, especially if I'm wearing something that doesn't support my ankles (hips and down all play the game of, "When can we best surprise them by falling out of place?" which results in, for instance, a subluxated hip because I stretched my leg while lying flat). But hey, it's walking at all.

Good drugs have also helped with being more mobile, not gonna lie. My methadone is my best friend.

[denise]

oh, i know that game! it's like the time i once fucked up my shoulder for a good two-month period by carrying a few bags of groceries! fun times, fun times.

i generally wind up just using my cane for walking these days, since i've been diagnosed with no fewer than four different kinds of RSI in my arms and the wheelchair just makes it worse. but it's nice to have it around in case things swing in the other direction.

(side observation, of the "have to laugh because if i don't, i'll cry": i used to get horrible death glares when out and about, either with the cane or the 'chair; if using the cane i'm walking veeerrrrrry slooooooowly and people who got stuck behind me found it horribly inconvenient, if i'm using the 'chair it's "perfctly able-bodied looking young woman in wheelchair, you slacker". then, apropos of none of this, i decided i was tired of dealing with having hair and shaved my head. the death glares stopped immediately, because all of a sudden it turned from "can't see a reason why she should need assistive devices and therefore i will be annoyed at being inconvenienced by her" to "oh my god, the poor woman's dying of cancer and is bald from chemo!!1!11" it never fails -- when i've been lazy about re-shaving the head, people get grumpy at me for existing in ways to inconvenience them. when i've shaved my head recently, i get nothing but syrupy sympathy. if i ever do go back to school for that masters' in sociology the way i've been pondering, i am so going to do a formal study on that.)

and yes, drugs. HOORAY FOR MODERN MEDICINE, is all i have to say, especially since i also have a genetic quirk that means i process most drugs about ten times faster than 'normal' people. thanks to a few posters in fucking_meds i found the stuff i'm using as my primary painkiller these days -- nucynta, which totally made the difference for me in terms of ability level -- and i have to take it at stupid doses so that my body doesn't burn it off too quickly. and let's not even talk about the anaesthesia, lol.

but i am totally getting off topic for dw_suggestions now. heh.

there's actually a ridiculous number of disabled people working on DW! i'm pretty sure we outnumber the able-bodied people, actually. :)

[subluxate]

I used to use my cane a lot more, and I had a pair of forearm crutches that did me good for a couple of years. But then my left shoulder got absolutely debilitating, so I couldn't use the crutches and switched to the cane... then I managed to--and I don't know how--subluxate my right shoulder blade to the point that it was three inches below where it should be and sticking out by a good inch and a half, and it's never really recovered from that one, so the cane is out... so chair-as-walker it is!

Funny you should mention shaving your head! I just buzzed my hair today--it's about half an inch long now, and I considered just shaving it off--and am wondering if strangers will react differently now. I don't get out a whole lot (part of the reason I adore DW is because of how many friends I've made here, which means I can refresh my reading page every ten minutes and frequently come on a new post), but when we go more than about three and a half blocks, we usually take the bus, which means taking my chair. (I can't really sit on the bus seats without my hips/SI joints/tailbone going, "Nope, we're done." Also, we're often grocery shopping when we go out, and I can't walk through the grocery store most of the time.) I've had people give me filthy looks when I get up from my chair because the bus doesn't have restraint straps I'm comfortable with, I've had people go, "Why are you in a wheelchair?" like it's any of their business, I've had people touch my chair, which always makes me freeze up... (Freezing is because the chair is, effectively, part of me when I'm using it, and would these people just go around touching able people or their things? I am guessing not.) So I'm wondering if the reactions will change, now that my hair is so short.

I've heard of Nucynta! Definitely read good things about it. I'm glad it's working for you. My methadone is for a whole slew of things--the aforementioned screwed-up nerve, the permanent shoulder and leg injuries, the debilitating, intractable migraines (which are a "feature" of EDS, evidently)... and it's done SO much good. I was kinda leery of taking it, since my cousin and uncle (different sides of the family) both have addiction problems, but my pain doc was sure I'd be good on it, and he's been right so far. Except if I forget to take it. Then withdrawal happens. (By the way, NEVER go into opioid/opiate withdrawal when it's a hundred degrees or more inside. I wanted to DIE last summer when there was a prescription snafu.)

Do you have bad ankles? I've found that hiking boots work wonders to stabilize them. I bought a pair of Timberlands on clearance at my last job (brand-new, perfect-condition blue Timberlands in my size and width for about sixteen bucks, after my discount on the clearance price), and they've lasted five years now with barely any signs of wear. Haven't hurt my ankles once while wearing them, and my ankle braces fit inside and still let me lace/tie them. They're definitely something I'd recommend.

[denise]

i used to have horrible ankle problems, and the orthopedist kept telling me to try heavier boots or shoes with more ankle support or try lacing my shoes more tightly, and i kept getting sturdier and sturdier boots and i kept rolling my ankles more and more often, and i thought it was just my body deciding to fuck with me until i made the connection: duh. i'm always, always barefoot at home, have been barefoot as much as possible my whole life, and in all that time i almost never rolled my ankles while i was barefoot. so on the theory that barefoot = better balance due to being able to use my toes properly = fewer ankle problems, i switched from using heavy sturdy boots to the exact opposite end: now when i'm out and about, i wear canvas ballet slippers that are as thin as possible and allow me to both grip the ground with my toes and feel the terrain beneath me. since i started doing that, i've only had an ankle go out on me once!

isn't life with ehlers-danlos fun? trying to figure out what works and what doesn't is so time-consuming.

anyway. we're really getting far afield from dw_suggestions now, lol, so i should stop. but if you want to keep talking about life-with-EDS, you can drop a comment on a recent entry in synecdochic!

[kerravonsen]

I've heard good things about "five fingers" shoes as the closest thing one can get to being barefoot without being barefoot.
http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/

[kaberett]

I WANT TO READ YOUR MASTER'S THESIS.

[denise]

oh god, i have like fifteen billion different things i'd like to study in depth like that, but that one's pretty high up on the list. i'm really curious to see if it's just my perspective or not.

[swaldman]

Nor me!

[noracharles]

I use the Dreamwidth shop so rarely it makes little difference to me personally, but generally I tend to find drop down menus that are ordered by a mix of frequency and the alphabet confusing. I also find them unwelcoming, I don't like to be made to feel that I am not the target audience.

If you do go with a combination ordering, I suggest you include all the frequent countries in the alphabetized list as well, so users looking for Canada under C aren't frustrated.

[aedifica]

If you do go with a combination ordering, I suggest you include all the frequent countries in the alphabetized list as well, so users looking for Canada under C aren't frustrated.

Oh, I hadn't thought about that but I'm very much in favor of it!

[ninetydegrees]

+1

[kerravonsen]

+1

[inthetatras]

My vote "as-is" is for including Canada, UK, and maybe Australia at the top of the dropdown. Any beyond that would make it clunky and possibly confuse people.

[cesy]

Yes to at least Canada and UK, and to repeating them in alphabetical order as well so people can find them either way.