![]()
When shopping online, any additional complexity in the checkout process can lead to shopping cart abandonment. Abandonment is when customers put items in their online shopping carts but leave the site before completing their purchase, resulting in missed revenue.
According to recent statistics from Baymard Institute, nearly 3 in 4 online shopping carts are abandoned. While there are many reasons why online shoppers may abandon their cart, the third most common cause of abandonment was a “long/complicated checkout process”.
In today’s fast paced, mobile world online shoppers expect a frictionless and responsive ordering experience across all platforms. Online shopping has seen great innovations, but address entry for shipping or billing information remains tedious and complex. A quick and accurate checkout experience becomes even more crucial on mobile, where text entry is more difficult and often fraught with errors.
Part of this complex problem can be resolved with Google Places API. The Google Places API draws on detailed information about 100 million places from the same database as Google Maps to provide address suggestions and match against known delivery addresses.
Included in the Places API is the Autocomplete ‘type-ahead’ functionality that consumers already use on Google Maps. The Google Places Autocomplete API provides a quick entry field with address prediction that can be used to automatically populate a full shipping or billing address form.
By incorporating the Google Places API Autocomplete feature in your online store’s checkout flow, you can reduce the number of address entry errors (which cause costly failed deliveries), decrease the number of steps in the checkout process and simplify the address entry experience on mobile devices.
ENABLE USERS TO ENTER A BUSINESS OR POINT-OF-INTEREST NAME
The Autocomplete ‘type ahead’ prediction functionality doesn’t just work for street addresses; users can enter a business or landmark name (e.g. Sydney Opera House) and the Google Places API will fill out the rest.
USE A MAP TO PROVIDE VISUAL CONFIRMATION OF THE DELIVERY LOCATION
Following address entry, the Google Maps Javascript or Static Maps API can provide the user with visual confirmation of the delivery location. This gives the customer further assurance the delivery address is correct and reduces costly delivery failures.
DISPLAY ADDRESS SUGGESTIONS RELEVANT TO INDIVIDUAL CONSUMERS
The Google Places API allows a bias to be set on the suggestions returned by Autocomplete. This bias can be defined by a preset geographic region or by the current location of the consumer. This ensures that online consumers will always receive the most relevant address suggestions, speeding up the process.
To learn more about how Places API can help your deliveries find customers faster, contact the Liveli team.
Back To News Stories