Studies state that 59% of consumers will be less likely to order from a retailer again if they have a negative delivery experience.
With 70% of UK online shoppers losing parcels due to poor addressing in 2022, it’s important for businesses to understand how address verification can help their business improve customer engagement and satisfaction, as well as enhancing their overall business capabilities and increasing their chances of repeat business and business growth.
Understanding this, Jon Good, director of UK address validation and solutions company Hopewiser, explains why delivery address accuracy is vital to your business and the ways you can improve address verification.
Good said, “Address verification is the process of confirming that the customer’s address is accurate and deliverable. Businesses may lower shipping costs, enhance customer checkout experiences, and improve their own customer data using address verification. However, relevant technology must be available in order to accurately verify addresses utilising available information and resources.
“Issues with address accuracy usually centre around two things; Complicated address forms and a lack of address verification.
“About 5% of all e-commerce forms contain errors. These can be decreased by streamlining the process, making it easier for people to follow and complete. Doing so, helps businesses to save time and money. And one of the advantages of address verification is that even if a mistake is made, it can still be corrected.”
Below are several tips to help successfully improve your business through following correct address verification processes:
Add an address autofill option – Customers can quickly add their address details automatically without potential human error when address autofill is used. From this, businesses are able to convert website and app visits into sales at a better rate by using a single address field rather than a time-consuming multi-field address form. This is achieved by not only decreasing the amount of customer errors that may result in delivery issues but also speeding up a sometimes lengthy process.
Decrease cart abandonment by simplifying the address filling process – Increased accuracy and reduced e-commerce cart abandonment are both achieved by adding autofill choices and streamlining your checkout process. In the UK, 17% of carts are abandoned because of a difficult checkout process. This suggests that your company could see higher customer conversions as a result of improved address verification processes.
Help your business launch into new markets with accurate address data – Accurate address data ensures that your customer relationship management is current and error-free. Because of this, other departments within your company will get the information they need to be successful. Ultimately, accurate and reliable address data can facilitate marketing, enhance customer support, and forecast future trends for any business.
Improve order returns and cancellation rates with address validation and matching – Validating addresses helps prevent failed delivery attempts by infusing the correct delivery addresses into your shipping solutions. Address verification softwares allows businesses to check mailing addresses against an authoritative database to determine their validity, which in turn maximises a businesses chance of having the correct customer addresses in a CRM.
Top three address validation mistakes your business must avoid:
When it comes to your address data, inefficiency and inaccuracy can be easily solved. Have a look below to see if you’re making any of these address related mistakes, and find out how you can avoid them:
Not Using PAF: The Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF) contains over 30 million delivery points, and is the UK’s most up-to-date address database. Using a software provider that isn’t powered by PAF can lead to problems such as increased risk of mis-deliveries due to inaccurate matches and complicated online transactions which may result in cart abandonment.
Considering PAF receives 4-5,000 updates per day, it is essential you incorporate an address validation tool that uses this highly accurate dataset.
Having Disparate Address Validation Tools: 46% of respondents to a survey claim disconnected data is negatively impacting their organisation’s ability to engage, support, and meet the needs of their customers. We’ve spoken before about the dangers of having disparate data, and your address validation software is no exception.
If your business has numerous systems in various departments, this can become problematic when it comes to updating the software. If certain tools receive updates more regularly or irregularly than others, this can cause conflicting output data, which then compromises the accuracy of your customer information
Having a centralised solution will help you avoid the problems that come with disparate systems. Not to mention you’ll benefit from cost savings with reduced licence fees and less maintenance time.
Not Making Use of Additional Datasets: 19% of business decision makers express they have lost customers as a result of having incomplete or inaccurate information about them. Depending on your target audience, additional datasets are sometimes required to enhance your customer targeting. If your business fails to make use of extra datasets, such as Multiple Residence and Not Yet Built, verifying customer identities and ensuring delivery to the correct address could become an issue. This in effect could harm customer retention as well as making your company more susceptible to fraud.
Ultimately, for the success of your company, you must maintain a database of accurate, current addresses. Deliveries that are correct can save your business time and money while also improving the experience for your consumers. Recurring clients who are pleased with your product or service are more likely to tell others about it.
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