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    I have no answer but a good example of what not to do : 1) do not rely on the site main language lexical order 2) do not use "scotland" and "united kingdom / england" (respectively sorted as "écosse" and "royaume uni") 3) if you choosed to use british countries, do not place Belfast in Ireland.... (see toulouse.aeroport.fr/en/all-our-flights/all-destinations/…) – FabienAndre Aug 9 '11 at 9:08


  • automatically copy popular countries to the top of the list
  • allow for plain text typing and auto complete countries that match



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  • The ideal solution is where United Kingdom sits at the top of the list if you are a user in the UK - as well as being repeated in the alphabetical listing. The UK has - at the moment - the same Royal Mail postage rates within the zone. Whether this stays the same after Brexit remains to be seen, as the UK may cease to exist as an entity. – PhillipW Jul 23 '16 at 12:03





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Choose a standard and stick by it.


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What's wrong with including all the common names? For instance, if you wanted to support the UK and the Netherlands:

  • England
  • Great Britain
  • Holland
  • Netherlands
  • Northern Ireland
  • Scotland
  • United Kingdom
  • Wales

If you're worried that users will get confused why there is more than one option, than you could do this:

  • England (or the United Kingdom)
  • Great Britain (or the United Kingdom)
  • Holland (or the Netherlands)
  • Netherlands
  • Northern Ireland (or the United Kingdom)
  • Scotland (or the United Kingdom)
  • United Kingdom
  • Wales (or the United Kingdom)
  • What's wrong is that it is inconsistent with convention. This means it may be jarring and distracting from a task. – jackiemb Jul 23 '16 at 11:11
  • @jackiemb The convention is annoying and bad UX, as described by OP. The tolerance principle says that interfaces should be forgiving of different inputs, and not needlessly pedantic. – Flimm Jul 23 '16 at 11:31
  • Users learn. Interfaces teach. Not every circumstance needs to be designed for. – jackiemb Jul 23 '16 at 11:46
  • I am honestly shocked to read comments like this in a forum dedicated to user experience and design. – Flimm Jul 24 '16 at 12:53

I did a bit of informal user testing on this a while ago, to see if there were issues. United Kingdom at the top, then repeated alphabetically. From memory:

  1. Many users missed the top listing initially.

  2. All users found the correct country eventually

  3. Some found the country by returning to the top

  4. Some found the country by scrolling to the bottom

  5. While some said they were looking for England or some variation, this didn't stop them from completing the task, and I don't remember them registering annoyance about it afterward

  6. The rolly scrolly mouse thingy caused a problem sometimes because they would select the correct thing from the list, and then not notice that they'd selected something different accidentally, but that was ok because they always noticed it was wrong when replayed on the next page, and could go back and correct it.

Like I say, this is from memory, which is fallible, and I don't have my notes. I do remember item 6 quite clearly though, and I do know that we were satisfied with the design as tested.

It takes half a day to do a bit of testing on this, if you use an existing site and a realistic task.

  • Thank you Jackie, this is an awesome answer - it's great to have some actual testing results to refer to! – ZoFreX Aug 6 '16 at 11:55

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