How to Gain a Competitive Advantage on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Address validation will ensure accurate and speedy deliveries to your customer

The ecommerce market is competitive. E-commerce now accounts for more than one quarter of all retail sales in the UK. This number is expected to steadily increase in the years ahead, and would reach nearly one-third of all retail sales by 2024.

Online shopping has become a favoured activity for millions of UK consumers. Shoppers are very familiar with receiving products bought online and have high expectations when it comes to delivery speed, user experience and returns procedures. To succeed in this thriving market, e-commerce businesses must ensure they are able to provide accurate and timely deliveries.

It starts with Address Validation

Address validation is the process of capturing and validating addresses. This is done via a postcode lookup or address finder feature. Address validation is implemented on an ecommerce checkout address form, so that shoppers can quickly find their addresses and complete checkout swiftly. This will improve customer satisfaction and increase conversions for your store.

Postcode Lookup

Postcode Lookup is a search functionality that allows the user to enter their postcode, and selects correct address from a dropdown. Once selected, the address fields will be filled in with the completed address.

Here's a demo below:

Address Finder

Address Finder is a smart search where a user starts typing in any part of the address and they are presented with the closes match as they type. The details will autocomplete in real-time.

Here's a demo below:

View Postcode Lookup or Address Finder to guide you on choosing the right solution for you.

Address Data is your competitive advantage

Address validation captures your customer addresses to improve the user experience, but you're probably wondering what this means for your business.

Address validation providers source their address data from an authoritative postal service. In the UK, Royal Mail is the most trusted mailing service, their address database is called the Postcode Address File which contains 1.4 million business names, 1.8 million UK postcodes and over 30 million residential and business addresses. Here are the address datasets outside of PAF which provide an additional 1.3M premises.

• Multiple Residence: Sub-premises situated within multiple occupancy buildings. This dataset consists of up to 800k addresses.

• Not Yet Built: residential and commercial premises that are under construction or in the planning stage, which contains about 500,000 premises.

When you implement address validation, every address captured via your form is verified against the PAF address database. The database is updated daily, so you will always hold the most accurate, complete and up-to-date customer addresses. This data will allow your delivery drivers to locate properties easily and delivery parcels to the correct address, saving you time and money.

42% of shoppers believe retailers that offer address validation are more trustworthy than those who don't. This means that you'll attract more shoppers to increase sales and gain their trust by providing accurate and speedy deliveries.

We offer a simple integration to many e-commerce platforms such as BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Opencart and more. View our documentation to guide you on your chosen integration or get in touch to discuss your requirements.