Customize first name, last name into full name

[tinooze]

Hi,

This must be question of generations. From old community posts back in 2016, until now, I see now changes or actions from Shopify.

Maybe these Asian countries are too small to make a different.

Is there so much to ask to shrink down 2 irrelevant name fields into 1?

But Shopify decided to make it even worst, they make First name optional. This would create a big mess in terms of keeping things organized and third party integration - especially email marketing which we only use first name (in Asia).

Other solutions like having an app to pre-collect info would be not useful as well.

[Trejkaz]

I strongly agree that having a single field would be better.

I am certainly biased: I have a first name, and no last name.

So the current two options are both bad:

• When both names are mandatory, I put my name into the first name field, and have to make something up for the last name field. Good thing the form doesn't say it has to be my real name, isn't it?
• When first name is optional, I put my name into the last name field. It still feels wrong, but the form accepts it, and I don't end up with some junk placeholder on the address of the item when it arrives.

Shopify apparently did this because they thought that the shops wanted the last name on all orders no matter what. To that I say, is annoying the customer during checkout really the best strategy here? Or is a better strategy to be as usable right up until you have the money? Because I know that personally, I have decided once or twice to just use a different store, when the first store was being unnecessarily difficult to order from.

The other thing to say to that sort of thing is: Amazon have a single "full name" field, and they appear to be doing some pretty decent business. What makes it so hard for Shopify to provide the superior user experience?