Hi guys, I’m new to the forum here, but interested to get your thoughts on address verification in checkouts. Asking for personal details during the checkout can cause friction - so what’s the best way to go about this?
Hey Natalie,
Welcome. 
Great question. I agree with you. The more details you ask for, the more it hurts conversion, but that’s more to do with getting people to register, than just asking for shipping details.
You obviously need address details in order to ship, so you need to make it as simple as possible (and once people have entered their info, offer to save it for next time). Jared Spool did a study that showed that by not using the word ‘register’ and just asking people to enter their shipping details, people were more often converted to customers and less likely to abandon.
It’s important to offer guest checkout, and ask for shipping details before billing details – that way people feel committed.
These days it’s also important to consider the mobile shopping experience. Here is an interesting article about abandonment rates, with examples.
I’m not sure that I’ve actually answered your question…
You can also use a tool like https://smartystreets.com/ to offer auto complete and address verification to make the process as painless as possible.
For digital goods checkout, consider NOT asking for address info by using a payment processor that doesn’t need it like Stripe.
We’re currently undergoing a platform migration to Stripe in another company that I work with, and we’ve come up against something a bit annoying in this regard.
The EU laws require two pieces of ‘non-contradictory information’ to support the location of the customer. Examples of the type of supporting evidence that tax authorities will accept include:
[LIST]
[]the billing address of the customer
[]the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the device used by the customer
[]customer’s bank details
[]the country code of SIM card used by the customer
[]the location of the customer’s fixed land line through which the service is supplied
[]other commercially relevant information (for example, product coding information which electronically links the sale to a particular jurisdiction)
[/LIST] So we’ve had to add VAT no and country of residence into our check out process.
Thank you for your advice it’s been very helpful. It does seem that address verification in the US is not as well used as it is in the UK.
I thought you guys would be interested in an update, since my original post we’ve launched a smart address verification service in the US - Addressy. Would be great to have your thoughts on this.
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