@MAGCLOUD PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD tell your users that you don't ship to their country before they add items to cart, sign up (in order to confirm purchase), and then proceed to the payment page. PLEEEEASE!
However, I agree with you. They can make it easier. It's a good idea to use GEO-IP location to track the country and let users know right away.
I start on this page: http://magcloud.com/browse/Issue/88360 I click Buy Issue. I click Sign Up Now. Still haven't seen it. Even on the magcloud.com homepage I don't see it. Maybe I'm crazy/blind.
The site has my IP address this whole time and could use it.
Visitors from outside the US will feel my pain on this one - it is a common and maddening frustration.
People elsewhere have suggested as a solution btw: http://www.shipito.com/
Anyway I've had dinner and can now speak calmly. The feature that I described (a preemptive suggestion of the inability to ship to the visitor's country) is not common on the web. In fact most online retailers really suck at it. I still haven't found a decent solution for quickly checking whether Amazon items can be shipped to me without adding to cart and proceeding to checkout. However, it would be a welcome feature for most online retailers, and would definitely stop visitor's like myself from getting a nasty first impression.
I guess it's not implemented well because, by definition, if I'm outside your shipping area than I'm outside your target market. However you can see how this is short sighted, and keeping me happy might be a good idea for the future.
So those are my $0.02 on the issue. I guess this is what happens when a company makes me angry ten minutes before dinner :D