To AJAX or not to AJAX: A Cambodian’s Perspective
Did you know that Canada is a Top 10 leader in global usage of broadband internet access? We are.
Did you know that Canada is in the Top 25 in terms of global internet penetration? We are.
Did you know that Cambodia has approximately 44,000 internet users (in total) translating to less than 1% of their population?
They do.
For a country with almost 14 million people (Cambodia), internet adoption, historically, has not been high.
For a country with over 33 million people (Canada), internet adoption, historically, has been very high.
According to Wikipedia and the CIA World Facts Book, in 2005, oil and natural gas deposits were found beneath Cambodia's territorial water, and once commercial extraction begins in 2011, the oil revenues could profoundly affect Cambodia's economy.
For now, they are still a developing nation.
Yet more often that not, when I am completing an online form with my mailing or contact information, the “Country” dropdown menu seems to think I live in Cambodia. It’s the first country that pre-populates the field when I type in “C” and the next country on the list after Burundi.
In this case, alphabetical listings decrease usability.
There are several solutions to this:
1. Sophisticated eCommerce sites know their customer base and they will pre-sort their dropdown menus to include, for example, the USA and Canada, at the top of the list.
2. IP Location software can pre-populate forms for users who have basic, visible data points. Take the simple example of a user login from Canada. The purchase form may be quite complex as some businesses need more information to prevent fraud and to ship and bill accurately. Certain dropdown information such as country of origin, postal code, IP and domain name can be identified and pre-loaded in to the fields using tools such as: http://www.ip2location.com/
3. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is a group of inter-related web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications. A primary characteristic is the increased responsiveness and interactivity of web pages achieved by exchanging small amounts of data with the server "behind the scenes" so that entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time there is a need to fetch data from the server. This is intended to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, functionality and usability. Type recognition also allows real-time intelligence with the database / lookup tables which can significantly increase speed and ease of use, such that a user would be able to type “CAN…” to get “Canada” rather than Cambodia, Cameroon or Cape Verde.
Milliseconds of time are saved for the user. And I need my milliseconds.
Joy Boyson is Director, Business Development, Technical Marketing at The Marketing Store in Toronto, ON Canada and a member of the CMA Digital Marketing Council. She can be reached at joy.boyson@tmsw.com
