Form design

International Address Form Design

A form that works for one country can fail for another. International address forms need flexible labels, field lengths, character handling, and validation rules that do not assume every address is written like a U.S. address.

Avoid hard-coded assumptions

• Do not require a state field for every country.
• Do not store postal codes as numbers.
• Do not remove spaces or hyphens from every postcode.
• Do not limit names and localities to ASCII characters.
• Do not assume every address has exactly three lines.

Use country-specific labels

A field called State may make sense for the United States, but Japan uses prefectures and the UK may use county, post town, and postcode. Labels should adapt to the selected country when possible.

Test display, not only submission

Address data appears in account pages, receipts, labels, admin screens, CSV exports, and emails. Test long fields, wrapped lines, mobile layouts, and copy behavior across all these surfaces.

Generate practical samples

Start with U.S., Japanese, and UK samples to test different postal code and address-line patterns.