The case for Address Completion

There are many companies that offer Address Completion or Address Validation software for your e-commerce web site.  These are used in your checkout and provide your shoppers with valid addresses to select as they start to type their address. What are the benefits and do you need it? 

Address Completion Benefits

Quicker Checkout

After the user types a few characters the system starts suggesting addresses.  Usually within a half dozen characters their address will appear and can be selected with a mouse click or tap of their finger reducing the work involved in completing the address.  Quicker and easier checkout will help boost your order completion rate. 

Less Uncertainty

If your e-commerce store has a lot of gift business (Ship-to address different than Bill-to address) then your shoppers are facing even more uncertainty as they checkout.  I used to live on a little street in Kamloops called "Penzer".  For almost the entire time I lived there my sister sent my daughter gifts to our address on "Pender" street.  Having address completion software as part of your checkout stops the head scratching and abandoned checkouts as your shoppers stop to confirm addresses elsewhere.

Improved Deliverability

Sure it might not be your fault if the shopper entered the address wrong, but do you really want to deprive your customers of the joy of getting your products?  Undelivered shipments result in customer support calls, package tracking, and frequently replacement.  Even if this only happens to a small percentage of your orders every year, each one has a cost in time, money, and reputation.

More Accurate Fraud Protection

Most merchants use Address Verification Service (AVS) as part of their fraud prevention.  If a shoppers billing address does not match what is used for their credit card, the gateway will either flag or decline their order.  The challenge for many merchants is that shoppers are not consistent with how they enter addresses so many of the AVS results are not useful (One bank we deal with has 20 different codes).  Address Completion helps standardize how addresses are entered so that they are more likely to match.

Costs

The market for address completion is competitive and most services are priced by volume ranging from $0.05 to $0.10 per lookup (CAD) and can be purchased in blocks from as low as 1000 lookups for $100. It is important to keep in mind that lookups will not be an exact match for the number of orders on your site.  Declined and incomplete transactions are still billed but repeat shoppers who have stored address books will not use the function.

Drawbacks

The only issue we have had is with a delay in new addresses showing up in the address completion system.  If the property does not have postal service yet, it will not be in the system.  This affects new buildings and subdivisions mostly.  This will not prevent shoppers from simply typing in the address, but it might create some confusion.

To see it in action, check out www.itsaulgood.com where we did a custom integration as part of his multi-address checkout with CommerceCM.

Check out our website to learn more about CommerceCM or contact us to talk about your e-Commerce needs