Addresses are necessary to help find people and places, deliver goods, and sometimes even open bank accounts. A recent study revealed that most online orders with address typos or misspellings were preventable if an address validator had been in place.
On the surface, addresses can seem straightforward because we see and use them almost daily. But the reality shows that addresses that need to be corrected and formatted to local standards can lead to failed deliveries, and costly extensive customer support.
On November 9, 2022, Google announced the general availability release of Address Validation. A new Google Maps Platform API can help improve user experiences by removing friction at account sign-up or checkout and save time and money for your business by helping reduce the impact of invalid addresses on your operations. Address Validation identifies address components, fixes errors, and augments addresses with missing data, which helps prevent canceled orders, customer support tickets, and refunds. It’s powered by the global coverage of Google Maps Platform’s Places data, our breadth of local address knowledge data, and postal data in the United States for extended address coverage.
Address Validation: How does it work?
Address Validation helps developers detect inaccurate addresses by identifying missing or unconfirmed address components. That said, the API:
- Standardizes the input. Address Validation standardizes the information using Google Maps Platform’s Places data and knowledge of localized address formats, providing everything from typo corrections to street name completion, appropriate locality-specific formatting, and more. Thus, it becomes possible to identify address components, fix errors, and enrich addresses with missing data.
- Returns valuable metadata. It also returns valuable metadata about the processed address, such as individual address components with an accuracy confirmation level and Plus Code, geocode, and Place ID for the address. In specific geographies, Address Validation can also differentiate a residential address from a commercial address, which is essential when delivering packages during business hours.
- Aggregates data from multiple sources. Here, the postal service data is already included. Address Validation aggregates data from numerous sources, including postal service data. Address Validation API is CASS CertifiedTM from USPS® so developers can match against U.S. Postal Service® data.
When a user enters the street number, route, and locality, the API takes an address and region as input. It displays the response as visualized content — and as a JSON object.
Benefits of using Address Validation
When using the Address Validation:
- The percentage of sending orders to the correct addresses increases, reducing the cost of surcharges for residential addresses and lowering shipping losses.
- Customer data will become clean and accurate; now, packages and mail are more likely to reach their destinations on time.
Address Validation can provide benefits to several different use cases across industries. Here are a few examples:
- Retail/e-commerce. Reducing friction at the checkout by offering shoppers an easy way to correct their addresses. Doing so can help reduce failed or misdeliveries or other costly complications like canceled orders and chargebacks.
- Transportation & logistics. Assessing address deliverability upon receiving an order and helping ensure packages reach the correct destinations with more specific address components, such as apartment numbers. Drivers can save time and better predict delivery challenges.
- Financial Services. Using a proof of address to help authenticate new account holders. Companies can detect fraudulent sign-ups by verifying that a customer’s address exists at account creation.
With functionality like that and products like Geocoding and Place Autocomplete, Address Validation makes Google Maps Platform a complete address and delivery point validation service.
Real-life case: Ordering Platform
As an ordering platform, you can enable hospitality brands to transact directly with customers from their websites. Addresses are critical for such businesses because they support a range of order types–click and collect, on-demand delivery, and nationwide delivery.
As a result, with the help of Adress Validation, you can quickly identify and resolve complex components of the wrong addresses, which improves the operations team’s efficiency. You’ll be able to have more granular information on the errors. For example, if Line 1 and/or Line 2 are problematic, the operations team can rectify them accordingly.
Cloudfresh is a unique hub of expertise for Google Cloud, Zendesk, Asana, and Gitlab. To find out more information about Google Maps API for business, you are welcome to get in touch with our Google Maps certified product specialists.
What do we offer?
- Consultations and API integration;
- Google Maps Platform-based development services;
- Technical teams’ training;
- Technical support.
By cooperating with us, you will receive:
- Access to a seven-level discount system which is possible only with a Google Maps partner;
- Payment by invoice to a legal entity in EU, USD, CKZ, PLN, UAH, or any other currency;
- Collaboration in your native language, thanks to the multilingualism of our team;
- Professional support throughout the process of using the services.
Contact our team and get the chance to take your customers’ location-based experience to the next level with Google Maps solutions.
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