Questions · Addresses

How do I verify shipping addresses in my online shop?

Why the checkout is the right place

An address typed wrongly at checkout becomes a parcel that comes back, a late delivery, an email to the customer asking for the house number: it costs more than the shipping. At checkout, instead, the correction takes a moment, because the customer is there and knows the answer: the field proposes the right street as they type, fills in postcode and city from the national register, and if something does not add up it says so with a proposal (“Did you mean…?”), not with an error.

One rule always holds: the order is never blocked. If the customer insists on their address, the order goes through and reaches you with an outcome beside it, so you know which orders to look at before shipping.

Three ways, depending on how the shop is built

• WooCommerce or PrestaShop. You install the WooCommerce plugin or the PrestaShop module, paste your account token, and the address field at checkout starts suggesting and correcting. Every order gets an outcome (verified, with a warning, to check) shown in the order list; the verified form sits next to what the customer typed, and you apply it with one click, never automatically.
• A form of your own. The widget is added to any address field with a few lines and a proxy on your own domain: the token never reaches the browser.
• Your back-office software or app. The API verifies one address at a time or in batches and answers with the correct form, the outcome and what changed, field by field.

The orders you have already received

For the past there is nothing to integrate: export the orders to an Excel or CSV file, upload it as it is and download it verified, row by row, with every correction stated and the addresses to check flagged with the reason. The same file can find duplicate customers, even when written differently, and verify emails and phone numbers.

Each country, in its own form

The field is one and the same for every country in service: the customer picks the country, and the address is completed and verified against that country's register, in the form that is correct there — the postcode in the country's format (“1012 LG” in the Netherlands, “1100-053” in Portugal, three digits in Iceland), the house number before or after the street, the city as it is written there, abbreviations spelled out. What is not found is reported with the reason instead of guessed. Sweden follows as soon as access to the Swedish register is in place; the list of countries, with what we verify in each, is on the Countries page.

An address typed at checkout

Outcome: modified. Postcode corrected from street and house number in the Dutch national register, city in capitals, street name in its proper form. At checkout the proposal appears while the customer types; the order keeps a note of what changed.