Top eCommerce challenges—and how address verification can help

Ecommerce is growing—and it’s not slowing down. With global online sales jumping from 13 percent in 2019 to 18 percent in 2020, eCommerce is predicted to be nearly 22 percent of all global retail sales by 2024. This is leaving retailers excited, anxious, and overwhelmed with endless opportunity.

This rapid shift to eCommerce unlocks massive opportunities for businesses to expand market share and drive sales growth—and it all starts with data quality, especially address data.

Accurate address data is particularly important to help eCommerce businesses reduce failed deliveries, decrease shipping costs, avoid correction fees, and improve the customer experience. Think about it:

When you have the right address for each customer, you can have confidence that each purchase will be precisely delivered to the correct doorstep—whether it’s the customer’s home address or workplace. A seamless delivery means a better customer experience and you can avoid additional shipping fees. Not only is this handy in normal, everyday life but this is especially important as businesses close and reopen or customers relocate due to the global health crisis.

Looking to capture the right address today? Check out our free address lookup tool. 

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Address verification software is your answer to overcoming toughest year our economy has faced in over a decade. Experian has outlined the top challenges retailers could face if they don’t have a game plan to verify address data—and how address verification can solve for those challenges.

The challenge: Failed deliveries

Eight percent of domestic first-time deliveries fail. This costs retailers an average of $17.20 per order— or $197K per year.² Yikes!

However, although it’s very easy to see how daunting the annual cost could be of failed deliveries, a package not arriving goes way beyond that and could cost you customers. Which, in turn, could be a significant dip in revenue.

How address verification can help

Businesses can reduce failed deliveries by ensuring the address is being entered correctly by the customer during check-out. Think: Automated field entry as customers enter their contact data, reducing keystrokes and getting them through the checkout process faster. This is most effective and unobtrusive to the customer when a real-time, customer-facing address verification API is used.

The challenge: Increased shipping costs

Retail shipping services will increase an average of 4.9 percent in 2021.³ Yikes, again!

Between the cost of failed deliveries and increased shipping costs (there are more fees, but we will get to that), eCommerce becomes intimidating. This is why it’s important to ensure you have the right address data from the get-go.

How address verification can help

Businesses can save money on shipping costs by identifying whether a package is being delivered to a residential or commercial address (residential shipping costs more). Having accurate customer address information can also help businesses strategically plan out where and how to ship inventory based on geographic customer purchasing habits.

The challenge: Address correction fees

Charges related to address correction fees will increase by 5 percent in 2021.⁴ The fees keep piling up if you don’t have trustworthy address data. Address correction fees may be the most grueling one of them all.

Whenever an address is changed, your business could be a risk of an address correction fee per package. This can add up and it’s not unusual for retailers to see thousands of dollars of address correction fees if their addresses aren’t properly validated at checkout.

Check out our address validation best practices to learn how you can minimize these fees. Read now

How address verification can help

An address correction fee is a charge that is added by a shipper (like FedEx or UPS) in addition to standard shipping costs. This happens if the original address data has a mistake (e.g. wrong zip, missing apartment number) or if the address is just plain wrong. Address verification can help catch those errors and prevent address correction fees from happening before a package is shipped.

The challenge: Demand for free shipping

75 percent of customers expect free delivery⁵, putting pressure on businesses to offer free shipping to improve the customer experience. Free shipping could be a deal breaker or added bonus, for both consumers and retailers.

However, if you aren’t ready to take this step but still want to capture your customer’s attention, there are other ways to get them to complete the checkout process. Think about reducing those keystrokes to make the checkout process faster or providing free shipping after a certain amount has been spent, to increase the order price while improving customer experience.

How address verification can help

Reliable address data can help businesses improve shipping operations, avoid fees, and reduce returns. The cost savings that come as a result of improved address data can help make free shipping more feasible for businesses.

How Experian can help

With over 25 years of experience in data quality, Experian’s address verification software will ensure that your data is fit for purpose. With addresses from over 240 countries, our address verification software will help you avoid the growing shipping fees, reduce failed deliveries, and ensure a positive customer experience.

Using delivery point validation, the software combs through your existing address list to find inaccurate addresses, based on correct formatting. You can clean your address list through our bulk services or real-time address verification—which ensures new addresses are correct as they’re entered at checkout.

Experian can help you feel confident in your address data, ensuring you are always delivering to the right doorstep, minimizing the risk of unnecessary costs, and retaining loyal customers with each and every delivery.

Address verification software goes beyond avoiding unnecessary fees—it’s a catalyst to delivering a positive customer experience. Get started on cleaning up your address list today.

Learn more

Sources:

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/534123/e-commerce-share-of-retail-sales-worldwide/
2. https://magento.com/sites/default/files8/fixing-failed-deliveries-community-insight.pdf
3. https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/1009-usps-announces-new-prices-for-2021.htm
4. https://www.refundretriever.com/blog/2021-ups-accessorial-increase
5. https://blog.accessdevelopment.com/the-ultimate-collection-of-loyalty-statistics
6. https://marketing.dynamicyield.com/benchmarks/cart-abandonment-rate/