Running an e-commerce business can be utterly rewarding and lead to financial independence and a successful life. However, there is a lot to manage with such a business, such as ordering stock, customer service and ensuring that you have enough eCommerce boxes and cartons to fulfil orders, as well as getting items out on time.
One major frustration for many e-commerce business owners is delivery failures. Incorrect addresses cost businesses money and frustrate customers, leading to returns, refunds and poor reviews. This helpful article will share our top address validation tips, so you can stop delivery failures before they start. So, if you’re interested in this topic, continue reading to learn more.
Common Failure Causes
To begin with, we’ll list some of the most common delivery failure causes, and then, after that, we’ll dive into how you can correct these.
One major delivery failure cause is a missing unit number. For instance, if someone’s address is 12/489B Major Road, missing the unit number or the “B” on the address can lead to a failed delivery. In this case, the delivery courier may not be able to successfully deliver the package due to the missing part of the address. For example, if the address was correctly inputted as “12/489” or “489B”, and is missing the unit number.
Another major failure cause is invalid postcodes, such as incorrect or completely missing ones. Without a postcode, a courier or postal service can’t successfully deliver a parcel, as automated sorting systems rely on being able to read postcodes and sort packages accordingly.
Customers listing PO boxes on address fields is another cause of delivery failure, as a private courier company can’t deliver to PO boxes unless you’re shipping via Australia Post.
Another cause of delivery failure is typos in addresses, which make it difficult for couriers to deliver, as a typo can mess with automated sorting systems. Another still is deliveries to new estates, when GPS systems may not have caught up to new developments, when it’s time to deliver the parcel. Finally, rural addressing can be another major cause, as rural addresses can be tricky to find or face carrier delays due to remote locations.
Checkout Capture
One excellent way to mitigate delivery failure is by having smart and accurate checkout capture systems built into your checkout process. Having all the required fields here is a must, such as address, postcode, phone number, suburb and state. Having smart prompts that will not allow checkout if there is a missing field is another excellent way to mitigate delivery failure.
Autocomplete systems can also assist, as customers can autofill their saved addresses to ensure prompt and successful delivery. Real-time address validation can also be an excellent mitigating system, and having prompts for apartments, which can have tricky addresses, is also an excellent idea to have for your e-commerce checkout process.
Data Hygiene
Data hygiene for e-commerce businesses is critical for ensuring smooth operations and mitigating delivery failures. One of the foundational practices here is normalisation, which involves structuring data consistently across systems.
Another key aspect is the standardisation of abbreviations. For example, using “St” versus “Street” or “Ave” versus “Avenue” should follow a consistent rule across your e-commerce platform. This can work to reduce errors in shipping. Often, these standards are tied to postal guidelines, especially when operating in multiple countries.
Casing is another subtle but important factor in data hygiene for e-commerce businesses. Converting text to a consistent case, such as title case for names or uppercase for postcodes, will improve readability and help prevent duplicate records that only differ by letter case. This is crucial when integrating with your backend for customer and address management.
Deduplication is a core task in maintaining a clean database for e-commerce operations. Duplicate customer or product records can lead to misleading analytics, delivery failure, inventory errors, and customer frustration. Deduping algorithms can use a combination of exact matches and fuzzy logic to identify and merge or eliminate duplicate entries. You need to decide which fields (email, phone number, address) take priority when resolving duplicates.
Finally, e-commerce businesses must be mindful of international formats, especially when it comes to addresses. Address formats vary significantly by country, so forms and databases must accommodate these differences to ensure accurate delivery and compliance with regional regulations to avoid delivery failure.
Pre-Ship Checks
Pre-ship checks for e-commerce businesses involve several critical validation steps to ensure address accuracy and successful delivery and avoid delivery failure. Carrier validation confirms whether the shipping carrier can service the address. DPV (Delivery Point Validation) verifies the address down to the individual delivery point, ensuring the relevant postal system recognizes it. Geocoding is a process that assigns precise latitude and longitude to the address, which supports routing and location accuracy.
Deliverability flags identify potential issues such as incomplete, undeliverable, or high-risk addresses. If any discrepancies or errors are detected with the address, the correction workflow attempts to standardise or suggest valid alternatives before the shipment is processed, ensuring a smooth delivery and avoiding delivery failures and resulting in happy customers.
A Successful Shipping Summary
This helpful article shares our top address validation ships to help you prevent delivery failures before they start. We’ve covered common delivery failures and some steps to mitigate them, such as checkout capture, data hygiene, and pre-ship checks.
