How DIY toolmaker Cricut® reduces customer’s address entry errors by 82% with Loqate
Goals
- Deliver a fast and easy online checkout flow for customers
- Improve the quality of address data entering internal systems to reduce time spent manually verifying address data
Solutions
- Cricut uses Loqate's Capture API on their website for faster entry of shipping addresses during checkout
- Cricut uses Loqate's Verify API on their website to ensure only valid addresses enter the system
- Before implementation, Cricut used Loqate's Verify API to conduct a batch cleanse, confirming that existing and repeat customer data was accurate and up to date
- Cricut utilized the Magento 2 cartridge for a fast and seamless installation of Loqate’s Capture solution
Results achieved with Loqate
- Reduced the number of fields that the consumer has to manually enter for their shipping address with Loqate's Address Capture solution
- Incomplete, invalid, or undeliverable addresses are down 82% from Q1 2020 (pre-Loqate integration) to Q1 2021 (post-Loqate integration)
Building a "beautiful, fun, and easy" user experience
Every day, Cricut lives its dream of helping people lead creative lives by providing tools to make their DIY projects. However, with no previous address verification solution in place, their checkout process struggled to support their consumers' growing need for speed and convenience.
After conducting market research and comparing different solutions, Cricut decided to implement Loqate's Address Verification tools.
With Loqate's Capture tool, our checkout is much simpler. The user just starts typing their address, a verified address pops up after five, six keystrokes, and then they're onto the next step of checkout.
-Andrew Nickerson, eCommerce Product Manager at Cricut
"Before Loqate, our checkout form would have an address line one field, an address line two field, a city, a zip code, and a state field and a country field," says Andrew Nickerson, eCommerce Product Manager at Cricut. "That's six different fields customers had to interact with. So, a bunch of keystrokes, depending on how long your address is."
Loqate's type-ahead predictive technology made it easy for users to search and populate their address details into the necessary form fills, saving them time and ultimately reducing frustrated customers and cart abandonment.
Supporting Cricut users worldwide
Since its founding in 1962, Cricut's simple DIY cutting machines have helped countless pro, and first-time crafters cut and create personalized quality projects with ease. This popularity has only grown since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, creating an opportunity for Cricut to take operations overseas and reach new creative customers.
"We've had these aspirations to grow internationally, but we knew we had an existing problem with bad addresses getting into our systems," says Andrew.
With customer satisfaction as a top priority, Cricut sought a solution that would help customers seamlessly get through the checkout process, improve data quality, and increase employee efficiency.
"It was nice knowing we could have a single integration point with each of our international sites and that Loqate could provide accurate shipping and address data for that market."
One of the primary reasons we chose Loqate was their comprehensive global data sets.
- Andrew Nickerson, eCommerce Product Manager at Cricut
Working smarter with better data
Aside from creating a better customer experience, Cricut aimed to improve things for their employees – who often spent more time than desired manually verifying and correcting address data.
"Whenever a bad address hits our downstream systems, it would cause all sorts of headaches internally. Most of the time, we couldn't even give an order to FedEx or USPS without our team having to manually intervene and determine what the correct address should be. That interaction could involve reaching out to the member directly or doing their own research before reprocessing it through the system," says Andrew.
Implementing Loqate's Capture solution quickly improved overall efficacy, easily collecting a verified address upfront while minimizing chances of typos and other errors. In addition, Loqate's Verify API was run simultaneously to further ensure only valid addresses enter the system.
"We implemented the Capture solution as a way to make it easier to collect a verified address. However, we also know some users will sometimes not feel comfortable with the technology and choose to enter their location manually. So, we added an extra step where we're utilizing the Verify API in the instance that a user doesn't choose the captured address."
We compared the number of logged failures (incomplete, invalid, or undeliverable address data in our ERP) from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021, and failed addresses are down 82%. This is a pretty remarkable number!
Results
With each address being captured at the point of entry, Cricut has experienced significant manpower savings and a decreased amount of invalid or inaccurate address data entering their downstream systems.
"The result of this is faster shipments for members and fewer resources spent internally cleaning up address data," says Andrew.
Additionally, users can now capture and find an accurate address in less than ten keystrokes with Loqate's type-ahead predictive technology, accelerating the checkout process and creating a customer experience that is both easy and meaningful.
