How can good UX help to avoid failed deliveries?
User experience (UX) is how a customer interacts with a product, service or platform. It involves the end-to-end design of the customer journey, including use, purchasing and research. In the context of minimising failed deliveries, UX will help guide a customer through the checkout process by reliably collecting their details and assist them through to the point of receiving their goods. The various facets of UX design support the end objective of successful first time delivery.
Improve data accuracy with email and address verification at the checkout
In our recent Fixing Failed Deliveries report, 76% of businesses told us that physical address accuracy is very important/critical to their business with 71% agreeing that an inaccurate or mistyped address is the primary cause of failed delivery.
Concerns about address accuracy are shared by consumers with 45% agreeing that they worry about entering their details correctly when shopping online.
The ability to accurately capture address details is one of the critical elements of a good checkout process.
One way of improving the quality of address data through your checkout is to introduce address verification software. This software will help your customers to search and instantly validate their address details. Using this software also reduces the amount of friction with address entry time reduced by as much as 78%. In fact, according to Baymard Institute, a third of shoppers abandon a website when the form fill process is too long-winded.
With 45% of survey respondents having purchased from overseas (and over half of them saying that they would assume delays for overseas orders), the ability of Loqate’s address verification tool to support with address validation in over 250 territories across the world is definitely a useful means of avoiding international delivery failures.
In addition to capturing addresses, 78% of businesses rate collecting email data as highly important.
When you verify email addresses using Loqate's email validation tool you’ll also have the opportunity to communicate delivery updates by email. Having this line of communication means you’re better placed to manage customer expectations around their delivery and secure a better chance of first-time delivery success.
With the right user experience through this journey, you can also reassure your customer that their details are being validated and alleviate delivery concerns.
Another important consideration for checkout UX includes the ability of a user to track their path through the checkout. By providing a customer with visibility of what step they are on and how many steps remain, meaning you’re able to keep customers focussed on entering their information.
Simplify checkouts with address auto-complete
In our recent survey, 35% of customers stated that they find entering their address frustrating, and when customers have difficulty entering their address, 39% said they would look for the item with a different retailer.
Some 70% of the consumers we spoke to agreed that they would be more likely to shop online with online retailers who offer a simple order completion process. Customers now expect slick form requirements and minimal keystrokes. Accuracy is important, but if it puts the burden on the customer to ensure everything is correct, it increases the amount of time they spend at the checkout.
There are several different address verification solutions, including:
- Drop-down verification: From a drop-down menu, customers are given the option to choose their city, county and country.
- Partial verification: A customer enters their postcode, the city and county fields are automatically populated, while the rest of the data is entered manually.
- Post-entry verification: After manually entering their data, a pop-up offers customers possible alternative addresses. The customer then chooses the alternative that matches his or her address.
- Type-ahead verification: The website suggests addresses for a customer as they start typing their address. Type-ahead allows users to enter addresses in a range of languages and character sets, supports geofencing to restrict certain address types and supports geolocation using the IP address or device location.
Not only do a third of retailers who use address verification credit it with reducing failed deliveries, but a similar figure report improved registrations and an uplift in repeat business.
Avoiding failed deliveries from mobile eCommerce UX
The growth of mobile eCommerce reflects the developments made in mobile technology and the ‘mobile first’ way of working that many consumers now favour. Even before the pandemic accelerated the shift, Statista was predicting that mobile eCommerce sales would expand to almost 73% of total retail eCommerce sales worldwide. In our recent report, 67% of consumers told us that they have used a smartphone to shop online in the last three months.
In our survey, 17% of customers told us they had abandoned a purchase on a mobile device because the checkout process took too long, with 13% also having difficulty finding their address.
Mobile sites act as a magnifying glass for the user experience challenges of other eCommerce sites. Customers on mobile are contending with smaller screens and slower load speeds, meaning checkouts need to be quick to load and easy to complete. 70% of businesses say that address accuracy becomes a bigger issue on mobile. Loqate’s real-time address verification is the perfect tool for UX on mobile eCommerce sites.
Another tool that can be utilised on mobiles is Geolocation. Geolocation identifies the geographical location of an internet-connected device (such as a smartphone or tablet) using GPS. Using geolocation on mobile sites further reduces the keystrokes required when entering address and greatly improves address accuracy. Mobile devices that use geolocation apps tend to present a greater result than desktops. Geolocation, when used on a mobile device enhances UX because the relevant data you send and receive changes as your location changes.
Online florist, Bloom & Wild have integrated address validation into its checkout process and has seen the positive impact on UX. Aron Gelbard, Chief Executive Officer, Bloom & Wild, says:
“Loqate’s type-ahead addressing technology is highly intuitive and predictive which makes it ideal for customers on the move using mobile phones.”
Why improving UX to avoid failed deliveries matters to your business
With failed deliveries remaining a bugbear for consumers. 76% of survey respondents had at least one failure in the last 12 months, and 57% were reluctant to use a retailer again if a delivery is late. For these reasons, the commercial and reputational damage done by failed deliveries cannot be overstated.
And, if through great UX design, it is possible to increase checkout conversions while simultaneously capturing better data which results in more first-time deliveries, it is worthy of the attention of any retailer.
