Can this be done? Custom page based on geo-location

Hopefully someone out there can help with this not really ZC question.

I am running ZC and sell products around the world. However our core products and then one for which 95% of our visitors come to our site we only have rights to sell in Australia and New Zealand. We still get a reasonable amount of traffic from outside of these areas which we lose pretty quickly cause we can't sell to them.

Is it possible to create a script that will identify users from outside of Australia NZ and offer/ suggest that they go to an alternate site. We would prefer to not just redirect them without the option of entering but kindly suggest that if they are after specifics products then they should try another supplier (which we will direct them to).

I would also prefer this be integrated in ZC but perhaps a pop-up would be suitable. Although I am wary of blockers and the possibililty that people will close them without reading. So something else may be better.

Thanks for any ideas.

Redmonds

SUPER Bump!

I REALLY need to know the answer to this question as it will literally save my ###### and maybe even get me a promotion! :) Any help is SUPER appreciated! I need to be able to get my store to detect an incoming IP address globally (only as specific as country origin) and then change the default currency to that country's local currency from a list. I wanna be able to take it a step further and offer localized products.

Can this be done?? O_O :shocking:

Souryo,

We never did this. However we are looking into a similar resolution.

We are considering running 2 seperate sites. We can use Premium DNS services such as EasyDNS to resolve the DNS based on the source IP.

Eg. If the visitor is from the USA redirect to us.domain.com or domain.com/us to see a US based site.

if the visitor is from Europe then redirect to eu.domain.com to see a completely different site.

Only issue is completely different sites, seperate management of products, qtys, sales etc.

hope this helps.

Regards
Redmonds

Really appreciate your quick response Redmond! I'm still lookin for a solution. So far I've found Maxmind's GeoLight Country which has a free PHP database that you can match an incoming IP address too. I'm currently looking for a way to force the page to load a certain way once it recognizes the IP and matches it to the list... I really don't have the option of building more than one site everytime. I need a blanket solution I can provide for thousands of sites.... O.o

If you are familiar with .htaccess files which I am not you might be able to setup like the us.domain.com, au.domain.com mx.domain.com, but if its because of language you might be better off just installing languages.

With the .htaccess redirect you would have to install a separate version of zen cart for all the countries you where picking up and redirecting and setup all the products in that store, you could use the mass product uploader to add the products to the store but keeping track of quantity would be a little harder.

Using the .htaccess to do it i believe is something like what sites do that redirect you to a mobile version of a site for example.

souryo:

Really appreciate your quick response Redmond! I'm still lookin for a solution. So far I've found Maxmind's GeoLight Country which has a free PHP database that you can match an incoming IP address too. I'm currently looking for a way to force the page to load a certain way once it recognizes the IP and matches it to the list... I really don't have the option of building more than one site everytime. I need a blanket solution I can provide for thousands of sites.... O.o

I use Maxminds solution to put on my orders the country that the order is placed from. Good for picking up orders placed in Ghana when they say they are in Australia.

However there are lots of limitations to this....
If an Aussie customer works for IBM for example in Melbourne and places an order on their work computer. Because they are on an Intranet based in the US. The IP address will show that they are in the US, not Australia.
As a lot of my customers tend to purchase using their work computers I would lose a lot of my customers by forcing them to look at a US website instead of the Aussie website that they want.

As well I only deliver to Australia.
But I want expatriates, customers overseas on holidays, and friends and relatives overseas to be able to buy my products and have them delivered in Australia to their homes, or friends or relatives here in Australia

I suggest you consider the large number of customers that you will Pi** Off by forcing them to go elsewhere because you think they are not in Oz, when they are.
And those that are not in Oz at that time but want to have stuff delivered to Oz

You will really quickly "lose your promotion" by being so restrictive and losing lots of customers this way.

Maybe like all the BIG websites allow the customer to choose the country they want to deliver to.
And make it clear that you can only deliver to your region.

Great feedback! However, I think my problem is a little different. I've calculated that the detection will never be 100% accurate and discussed it with my bosses already. They're cool with that and want to proceed.

Today I've found an extremely great example of exactly what I'd like to achieve here: http://dynamicconverter.com/prostores#prostores_examples

Do you notice if you click the cost of the product, you can choose your local currency? This will clear up the issue of an incorrect display based on location I believe, so there's still a choice. It looks like a great product they offer, but I want a more expansive version that I can work with and do myself. If you notice, the page detects where you're at and shows you the local currency, or you can choose the correct one if it's wrong. But I also want the page to load that way, with the choice of changing with a "Is this not your location? Click here" tagline to allow the correct redirect. I also want this to run off our server in our company instead of outsourcing, and connecting to our rates once a day instead of someone else's.

Phew, any ideas?? :clap:

Any luck with this one??:huh: