In the example above, the primary focus of the specific company was pretty regional and did not serve an international audience. My conclusion, after taken a sample on the web, is that a similar data quality increase can be gained for globally operating companies, and that the same underlying paradigms need to be implemented. These paradigms are:

• Localize your entry screen: Design your entry screen in such a way that it fits with the cultural behaviour of your audience. And sorry to say, that is much more than changing the language from German to French, or from English to Italian – yes, there are more languages in the world than US English ;-).
  Think, for example, about cultural differences in names, names per gender – and related salutations, addresses, postal codes, the need to ask for a state – that stupid fact that most non-US countries do not have states, and if they have states, the chance that it starts with Alabama is almost zero.
  A well known authority on addresses is Graham Rhind and I love to hear his stories on clumsy entry screens in relation to the address. For example, simple facts like Ireland that does not use postcodes, or more recently inhabitants of small isle states that recently forced their government to introduce a postcode because they could not buy on the Internet, the entry screens forced them to fill in a postcode in order to buy.
• Prevent pollution of your data source. As with your kitchen or bathroom, you need to clean it every now and then, but it significantly helps if you take some serious precautions to prevent that it becomes a mess. Simple things like wiping your shoes before entering your house, etc. The same goes for data entry.
  The moment your user provides you with its data, it is better to validate and check it immediately before you use it – validate the syntax, the semantics, completeness, the existence and up-to-dateness. And in most cases it will pay off to enrich the data automatically before you check if the data is already available in your system(s).

I am curious, do we have user friendly entry forms somewhere in the world? Can you sent me – in your opinion – the best entry screen you have ever used – preferably for an international audience. Please provide me with th URL and a small screenshot of possible. If you sent me enough examples I will start a contest. And of course I am biased for western oriented screens but I will not run away from some exotic writing set that is used by 20% of the world population.

Help me in my search for the ultimate customer entry form. And… in case you want share some clumsy entry screens, do not hesitate to share them as well.

The first television broadcasts were actually radio broadcasts with a person on a screen reading the radio messages. In data entry we still see the same aspects. Did you ever wonder why we still feed a computer system with data as if we were writing an address on an envelope.

In the old days we knew how to contact, or how to write, but we needed additional information for the postman in order to find the person we had in mind. So we started with the smallest granularity, namely John from the Smiths family. Than we specified the street and the house number, the postal code and city ending with the country. And we do know that the order differs per country.

Now take the recent example, and I’m sure you’ve recognized it in your own environment.

Whilst the system could help you much faster if you would start with the largest granularity, data entry systems and especially contact information is still done in the old way. By starting at country level the system could immediately advice that it will not be shipped outside the US and if they did ship outside the US, system could provide the right postal code pattern, address format (house number before or after the street), could validate if the state is located in the country, if city is located in that state, if street is available in the city, and if person is living in that house. Now you need to wait until all fields are filled before you get the frustrating message, that Alabama is not a state of The Netherlands.

I have hope that this will change, Car navigation systems do not care anymore how to enter the address, provide the information you have, and they suggest the missing parts. Let’s place a browser in the car navigation, or change our way of working in the browsers …