Changes and enhancements to Magento website

General information for the website: We sell spare parts for agricultural machinery and other items (tools, safety items, batteries etc.)
Description of requirements/features: Bug fixes:
- the US are the default shippinp country - it should be changed to Italy (if that is done in Magento, some issues with the checkout come up);
- bug in the drop-down relating to the shipping method in the checkout page - the "Displayed error message" selected in Magento comes up even when it should not;
- link to view all news does not work - an "access denied" error comes up;
- remove red asterisk from products in search.

Enhancements and new features:
- new shipping option - pick up in store;
- enable configurable products, so that I can, for example, choose the size of a shirt or a shoe on the product page. It's obviously already enabled in Magento, but it requires some dev effort on the front-end;
- help with setting up MailChimp to take over Magento emails and Newsletter.

It would also be helpful to get some suggestions on possible other improvements.

Our website is: http://lavezzi.it/
Extra notes: