The quality of customer data is an important part of the business. Bad data can lead to disaster – from lower revenue to bad business operation, there are a lot of things involved that can affect your overall customer experience. As soon as a customer clicks on the order button, they are constantly waiting for the product to arrive at their doorstep. And if there are some technical problems, like a change in customer address, it can lead to frustration from both sides.
Speaking of address, it is one of the most important assets of any eCommerce store, especially a global one. You can replace the name, phone number, and even email, but if there’s something wrong with the customer address, you’ll lose the valuable customer. So how can you verify any international address and why does it play such an important role in your eCommerce business?
What is Address Verification?
Address verification or validation is a process of capturing and clearing your contact address. In addition, the address validation also ensures that the data is standardized, accurate, and up to date.
This data can be easily verified at any part of your business cycle. Mostly, it is done in a stored database but there are a lot of address verification systems that provide an address auto complete API to integrate directly into your CMS, in a call center, your custom website, or existing address.
Why is it important?
Address verification is important – After all, if your customer doesn’t receive the product then there has to be someone who pays for the shipping. And in 98% of the cases, that’s the company. Each year, companies lose millions of dollars just because of failed delivery. Even if that’s not your problem, you still have to pay for it.
By verifying the addresses, an eCommerce business can gain both direct and indirect benefits. Integrating AVS software, API, or manually checking your address means investing in two parallel elements.
- First, your user experience is improved, they don’t have to deal with any unnecessary steps.
- Second, your data will be automatically collected and verified in the CMS database.
5 reasons to use International Address Verification for your eCommerce business
The following are the reasons why you should use an international address verification system for your business.
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Conversion Rate
As per studies, the average cart abandonment rate is 69% of a website. And the root cause of this is the long and complicated checkout process. It is common knowledge that the less time your customer spends at the checkout page, the more likely they buy your product.
Therefore, it is important to simplify the checkout process. And one of the effective ways to do this is to include a reliable address verification system. There are a lot of AVS systems that will help automatically complete the checkout form as soon as identifying information is entered by the user.
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Time-Saving
First and foremost, it helps save a lot of time. If the customer entered the wrong address, you might actually get a chance to correct it at runtime. Traditionally, this error is not correctable unless you deliver the order and it comes back the next day. This is especially true for International orders as the shipping can sometimes become more costly than the product itself.
By address validation, you could save a lot of time by confirming the address before you start shipping. With tools like dedicated software or an API, your customers will have the best user experience at the checkout.
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Cost
Returning orders will have a direct impact on your business revenue. Although big companies have a separate budget to tackle such losses, for startups, this is actually a nightmare.
With address verification, you can save the cost of returning the order. The product will be delivered to the authentic customer without any re-assessment.
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Reduced Pop-ups
Pop-ups are one of the most annoying things for a customer but it’s also one of the best ways to increase conversion. However, using them in the checkout section is not helpful as the majority of the customers are entering their personal information. They don’t want to see a pop-up stating that they have entered something wrong and their order can’t be fulfilled.
So, using an address verification system will check each field as they enter the data. In most cases, if the customer has entered the wrong data, it will be automatically fixed by the system.
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Automated Address Validation
One of the best and most valued features of using an AVS system is that it automatically checks the database of customers. Let’s say customer A uses an address A and has recently shifted to address B. Now, most of the time customers tend to change their address manually, but if they forgot to do so, the system will automatically check the address before sending the order.
If in case the system raises a flag, you can always contact them and ask for valid address details.
Factors to look for in an International Address Verification System
Now that we know the importance of AVS and why you should use this, here are some of the best practices that you can follow.
- Automate address fields: By using a verification API, you can automate the process and make it more manageable.
- Use third-party tools: There are a lot of different tools and websites that can help manually automate your address database.
- Follow International standards: You might figure out your local address, but it’s complicated to verify an international address. Use autocomplete address verification to build positive brand awareness.
- Validate text processing: Most users don’t enter a proper address and might miss out on some black spaces, numbers, and letters. Using address verification API, you can validate the spelling mistake and make possible address suggestions on the checkout page.
Conclusion
Collecting accurate customer data is a crucial part of the eCommerce business. It makes sure that the product successfully reaches the customer as soon as possible. This is especially true for International customers, as failed delivery from such customers can really put your brand credibility at risk.
To have freedom of mind and improve your business conversion rate, it is recommended to invest in an International address verification system.
