Reduce friction in forms | Smooth moves aren't just for dancing

What’s wrong with this picture? Your quarterly web traffic is up, but sales are down. Somewhere in your sales pipeline, friction is stopping leads from converting. Online forms and ecommerce checkout flows are a common source of friction.

Did you know?

The mean conversion rate for online forms is a mere 21.5% 76 out of every 100 visitors abandon their cart when they’re unsatisfied with the experience Cart abandonment is responsible for $4.6 trillion in lost eCommerce sales yearly

All the work you put into planning and developing lead generation campaigns—free trial signups, gated resource downloads, etc.—is for naught if your forms don’t perform.

The solution? Use address autocomplete to reduce form friction

Address autocomplete is a web form feature that suggests street addresses to users as they type an address into a form. Adding autocomplete helps make address submission faster and more accurate by reducing the number of keystrokes a user needs to type and preventing potential typos.

Two additional benefits of autocomplete are:

1. Leaves address parsing up to the automated systems rather than the user.

Address parsing is breaking an address into individual pieces (i.e., name, house number, street name, city name, state name, ZIP Code, etc.).

You could do this manually, but it’s inefficient. It can also be annoying for users to have to tab between individual address fields on a form. Allowing them to simply start typing in one field and having your system parse the address after input simplifies the form experience and thus improves form conversions.

1. Eliminates potential confusion and errors around the mysterious "Address Line 2."

Address Line 2 is a form field for entering secondary address information like apartment numbers, suite numbers, and PO Boxes. There are also non-address uses for this field—call centers use Address Line 2 when filling out internal customer address forms to enter data into their CRMs, for example.

Many people don't know what to enter when they encounter Address Line 2 in an online form. Unfortunately, confused customers often become angry customers, and that’s not the user experience you want to deliver. In addition, your business can suffer from high form abandonment, lost/returned mail, and poor data hygiene—all because you included the Address Line 2 field.

Implementing address autocomplete and validation can improve the user checkout experience and prevent the “What do I put in this Address Line 2 spot?” confusion.

How address autocomplete improves your form ROI

So you’ve added autocomplete and your forms are smooth as silk. What kind of benefits can you expect to see from investing in and implementing address validation and autocomplete?

• Reduced Checkout Time: Autocomplete makes address entry—and the overall checkout process—faster.
• Decreased Form Abandonment: A faster checkout process gives leads and potential customers less time to second guess their choice or change their minds.
• Increased Conversions: Limiting form fields that users have to fill out increases form conversion rates.
• Improved Address Accuracy: Keep your database clean by ensuring only accurate addresses enter your database.
• Reduced Customer Service Struggles: Accurate address data allows you to spend less time doing damage control and more time upselling and acquiring additional customers.

Now, let’s take a look at a real-world example of using address autocomplete to optimize your checkout flow.

How Speedway Motors optimized their ecommerce checkout UI with Smarty

Despite increasing traffic to SpeedwayMotors.com, eCommerce conversion rates were declining. To optimize their online checkout experience and improve conversions, Speedway Motors implemented Smarty's US Address Autocomplete and US Address Verification to improve user experience (UX) flow.

By predicting only validated addresses, Smarty minimizes the number of inputs needed to identify an address. Customers can find the correct address in as few as the first 3-5 characters.

Conversion rates improved, and Speedway Motors has seen fewer issues with misdelivered or returned packages using Smarty's validation over UPS.

Read the whole case study here.

Conclusion

To sum it all up, making one simple change to your form experience—address autocomplete—can maximize your potential profits by increasing conversions and preventing future customer service issues.

Download our ebook, 5 Ways Companies Use Address Verification to Improve Business Results, to learn more about reducing form friction and discover four other ways to use address verification to maximize profits.