Black Friday ready: Real-time ecommerce address verification

Don’t panic. We’re not telling you to set up your Christmas lights in July or tune into your favorite holiday station. We’re not crazy here (mostly). But also, do your thang.

What we ARE saying is that if you’re in ecommerce, you know just as well as Smarty does that you have to start prepping for those big holidays months in advance. Today is as good as any to see how setting up the right real-time address capabilities, like suggesting verified customer addresses as they type, can get your business in the black on Black Friday. 

We’re embracing the spirit of giving a little early. Below are a few free trials to test what we’ll discuss.

Ho, ho, hold onto your sleigh because anyone in ecommerce understands that correct address information is crucial, especially during holiday time. If your customer inputs bad address information, you get stuck with the added costs. Extra shipping expenses and angry customers who didn’t get their gifts on time might add words to your vocabulary that would put both of you on Santa’s naughty list. 

First off, using real-time address autofill and verification through an address autocomplete API provides 2 main benefits: 1) increased return on investment (ROI) and 2) effortless customer experience. Let’s unwrap the gift that keeps on giving.

Increase your ROI with real-time address verification during checkout

We spend money to make money, so it’s important to know that your bread was spent wisely. We’d tell you to trust us when we say that ROI is increased by using our ecommerce address validation tool, but we think it’s better if you hear it from our customers instead. 

Fabletics, a leading athleisure brand with over 2 million VIP members globally, aimed to enhance its mobile checkout experience to combat high cart abandonment rates during address entry. With about 80% of customers shopping via mobile, Fabletics needed to streamline the process. 

By integrating Smarty's US Address Autocomplete, they significantly improved first-time customer order conversion rates, particularly internationally, witnessing increases in the 4 countries they tested:

• 9.2% in Canada 
• 3.6% in Germany 
• 8.4 % in Spain 
• And 1.6% in France. 

Implementing real-time address verification through address autocomplete not only reduced checkout friction but also enhanced overall address accuracy. Fabletics paid for autocomplete capabilities once, but the benefits were reaped time and again as repeat customers were able to use their saved addresses for future purchases. 

Key benefits of autocomplete

Jolly holidays are here in the land of ecommerce ROI. These 4 gifts are yours when customers use real-time address verification APIs, such as US Address Autocomplete or International Address Autocomplete, in your checkout process:

1. Save money on shipping costs: With real-time address verification APIs embedded into your checkout process, you empower customers to easily pick the correct postal addresses from the already-verified suggested address list. This means packages will be shipped to accurate and valid addresses from the start. 
   
   These APIs prevent customers from choosing incorrect addresses. So, Vixen and Blitzen will have total confidence in guiding Santa to your customers, knowing an incorrect option will never be suggested. 
   
   In the long run, you’ll save money because you won’t have to reship packages, offer discounts, or offer money back. You can sit back and enjoy the eggnog knowing your products are being sent to a valid address.
   
    
2. Increase time-savings and team efficiency: All is not calm, and all is not bright for a customer whose package might get lost in flight, or worse, end up at the wrong address. 
   
   Undeliverable shipments and “return-to-sender” notifications become cumbersome on your organization’s time. Now, multiple teams get involved to communicate with the customer, run quality assurance on the returned product, process the return, update inventory, pick up and pack the product, pay for shipping, and arrange for package delivery... again! Think of how many lengthy emails, apologetic chats, and heated phone calls could be avoided if your customers got what they ordered on or before the date they expected it. Also, see category one above. 
   
   Time is money. Ecommcerce returns are like trudging through a blizzard in slippers: sloppy and frustrating while consuming an exhaustive amount of time, labor, and resources. This can lead to bitter attitudes all around. You and your employees’ time is better spent with the people most important this holiday season rather than fixing pesky, incorrect addresses. Improve the checkout process by improving how your customers enter their shipping addresses.
    
3. Effortless customer experience: Let’s drop a few frosty facts. 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any advertising. Additionally, 74% identify word-of-mouth as a crucial factor to consider when purchasing items. Brands that effectively leverage word-of-mouth marketing typically see an annual sales increase of 5-10%. Ensuring your customers have a positive experience with your brand is more important than ever.
   
   
   On the flip side, consider what happens when your customers have a bad experience due to lost packages, sometimes from their fat-fingering typos. (Yes, they’ll blame you for that.) Now, word of mouth can have a very negative impact on your brand and your revenue overall. 
   
   With US Address Autocomplete or International Address Autocomplete, Smarty’s API suggests verified addresses surrounding a customer’s location as they type. Within 6-10 keystrokes, your customers will see and be able to simply pick their verified addresses from a drop-down list, banishing incorrect addresses from “Scrooging-up” your database.
   
   What’s that saying? Happy customers may become advocates for our brand and help increase profits? Yeah. That’s totally it. Your organization’s use of real-time address verification will keep your clients coming back for repeat business again and again.
    
4. Increased conversions: Reducing the time spent in the checkout process improves your customer’s experience and quickly turns a digital sleigh loaded with presents into an actual purchase. With autocomplete and real-time address verification processes in place, your customers will delight in the ease and speed of choosing their standardized and verified address after just a few keystrokes. Instead of typing in each part of an address (street, city, zip, etc), they'll have already hit the purchase button.

Do you see what we see?

If you want to increase ROI and provide a sparkling customer experience, address validation software is a must. 

Your ecommerce business needs accurate address verification APIs to reduce abandoned carts, undeliverable addresses, and frowny faces. Get real-time address verification and increase conversion rates, delivery timeliness, and holiday cheer. This year, to save you from tears, you should give autocomplete to someone special — you and your organization. 

Bonus Gift 

We want you to succeed in all your holiday endeavors, so our elves built an ecommerce solutions page specifically for you. Also, in case Grandma gets run over by a reindeer, our customer and technical support teams are sitting by the fire (jk, it’s July), waiting to answer any questions and make your days merry and bright.

Like what you see? Try it now with our address intelligence elves for US Address Autocomplete or International Address Autocomplete. Happy holidays in July!