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Advanced address verification

In addition to offering address autocompletion (for merchants on the Plus plan), our app includes a block, which can be used to perform advanced address verification of full addresses, which have been manually edited or filled in automatically by the user's browser or browser extension. This can be used by merchants on any Shopify plan and helps ensure your checkout captures deliverable addresses in three key scenarios:

  1. The user selects an address suggestion using the autocompletion functionality, but then realizes they picked the wrong apartment number or that the chosen address is missing their apartment number for example, requiring them to manually edit the address fields, which can lead to unintended errors.

  2. The user bypasses address autocompletion because they use autofill functionality provided by their browser or a browser extension. The automatically filled-in address may contain mistakes.

  3. The user chooses an accelerated or express checkout method, such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, which pulls their details from the provider's wallet or saved profile. The saved address may also contain mistakes.

Our block can handle all of these scenarios and can be configured to automatically appear on the Checkout or Thank you page, depending on your Shopify plan. The user then has the choice to ignore the changes or to validate their address using our Experian Address Validation API.

Enabling the feature

  1. Enable advanced address verification within the app's Settings page.
  2. Configure the block within Shopify's checkout and accounts editor.

Limitations

Advanced address verification only supports the Shopify Delivery address, as the Shopify API does not currently allow extensions to write to the Billing address fields.

Our block can only be configured on the Checkout page if you are on the Shopify Plus plan, where we recommend it's used in tandem with our address autocompletion extension. If you're on a non-Plus plan, it can only be configured on the Thank you page.

It supports the following countries and datasets, depending on where it has been configured:

Country Dataset Checkout page (with our Autocomplete extension enabled) Checkout page (with our Autocomplete extension disabled) OR Thank you page
Australia au-address Yes Yes
au-address-gnaf Yes Yes
United Kingdom gb-address Yes Yes
gb-address-addressbase Yes Yes
gb-additional-multipleresidence Yes Yes
gb-additional-notyetbuilt Yes Yes
Ireland ie-address-ecad Yes Yes
New Zealand nz-address Yes Yes
nz-additional-datafusion Yes Yes
Canada ca-address Yes Yes
United States us-address Yes Yes
Denmark dk-address No Yes
France fr-address No Yes
Germany de-address No Yes
Luxembourg lu-address No Yes
Netherlands nl-address No Yes
Singapore sg-address No Yes

Note that the Settings page will notify you if you have the feature enabled and have selected an unsupported dataset.

Unsupported datasets

Costs

Behavior

Address handling

The block behaves differently depending on whether it's been placed on the Checkout or Thank you page. Expand the sections below to explore the differences.

If the block has been added to the Checkout page and the user is searching a supported country/dataset combo, the block will display an inline card in the following scenarios:

  1. Autocomplete (be it Experian or the default Google option) has already returned a valid address, but user makes any one address field change and leaves the field.
  2. Autocomplete is disabled AND the minimum required address fields (Address line 1, City, Postcode/ZIP code) are completed (manually or by browser autofill).

If triggered, it prompts the user to review their entered delivery address and decide if they would like to validate it:

Advanced address verification block on the Checkout page

If the block has been added to the Thank you page and the user is searching a supported country/dataset combo, the block will automatically validate the address and display an inline card with the result.

Advanced address verification block on the Thank you page

If the user chooses to validate their address on the Checkout page or reaches the Thank you page, the address will be sent to our API and result in 4 possible outcomes:

A verified match is found. The matched address will be shown to the user to confirm any corrected formatting/spelling errors and the addition of any missing address elements. The user can choose to accept the suggested address or keep their original address.

Verified match

More interaction required from the user to confirm that the address is correct, as the confidence in the validity of this address is not high enough for it to be classified as a verified match.

Interaction required

A list of suggestions:

  • Multiple matches. A list of suggestions containing all the matches will be returned and the user has to select the required address.
  • Premises partial or Street partial. A list of suggestions containing all the partial matches will be returned and the user has to select the required address.

List of suggestions

No matches found. If the address is not confirmed as correct, the entered address is presented as unverified.

No matches

Error handling

If an API error occurs during the address verification process the block displays an apology and confirms that the address as entered has been accepted. In the case of the Thank you page it will also allow the user to edit the address manually if they wish to make further changes.

Address confirmation

If an address is accepted on the Checkout page it is simply inserted back into the delivery address fields. On the Thank you page the behavior is a little different with a confirmation message needing to be displayed that covers the 3 possible scenarios:

  • The verified address was identical to the address as entered so a confirmation message is immediately displayed.
  • The user accepts a suggested address and is then shown a confirmation message.
  • The user chooses to use their address as entered and is then shown a confirmation message highlighting that the delivery address was not verified.

In all cases the user still has the choice to edit their address manually if they wish to make further changes.

Manual address editing (Thank you page only)

When the block is displayed on the Thank you page the user always has to the choice to edit their address manually via the Edit address button. An address entry form is displayed with the Validate button becoming active if any changes are made.

Edit address manually

Blocking checkout progress

For merchants on the Plus plan we recommend using advanced address verification with our autocomplete extension. In this scenario, we know that a user has successfully used autocomplete to select a valid address, but then edited it. We can therefore be confident in showing the checkout block with a warning banner and blocking checkout progress. This is indicated by a red error message beneath the Address field and a warning banner in the checkout block. The user cannot proceed until they have dismissed the checkout block or accepted an address suggestion.

Checkout progress blocked

It is possible to enable our advanced address verification whilst using an alternative address autocompletion provider or disabling address autocompletion entirely. However, in this scenario we can't be confident that there are issues with the entered address, so our checkout block is displayed without the warning banner and checkout progress is not blocked.

Checkout progress not blocked

Shopify

Additional features

  • Advanced address verification