As we mentioned in a previous post, the whizzkids in the Peecho development team have been working hard to improve our checkout and shipping procedure based on customer feedback. In this article, we will elaborate on some of the changes we’ve made, hoping to get some more suggestions from our customer community.
State information and address fields
The first set of checkout improvements was made in the “shipping information” page. Our customers in the United States can now choose their state information from a handy drop-down menu, making the process more intuitive. If your shipping address is not in the US, don’t worry, the state field magically disappears.
We also split up the first two lines of address data into multiple fields: street, number, building and P.O. BOX. This helps us make addresses more reliable in the validation department.
And speaking of address validation...
We also integrated an address verification service into our system. Once someone has paid for an order, we run their address through the web-service to verify it and obtain a formatted version based on the country information. This service has proved really useful because every country has its own way of formatting or writing address information.
International mail carriers often depend on country-specific formats to scan addresses automatically using specific software. If the format is not correct, there has to be a manual step in the shipping process, resulting in delayed order deliveries.
In the unlikely case that address details cannot be validated, the service gives us a percentage that takes a good guess at the accuracy of the address. If the percentage is low, the order will automatically go to a 'moderation' state, meaning that one of the Peecho guys will manually check if the address details are correct. We hope that implementing these changes will speed up delivery times and are already seeing some improvements.
Have more feedback or suggestions on this topic? Please help us out by leaving a comment below. We’d love to hear from you!