When you’ve poured heart and soul into your business, it’s frustrating when deliveries fail and customers are disappointed. what3words can help.
A quarter of street addresses in the UK don’t lead to a front door. When orders don’t reach customers, your time is wasted dealing with the extra admin. Delays also affect your customer satisfaction and reviews.
It’s the easiest way for customers to give precise delivery locations. Every 3 metre square in the world has an address made of 3 random words.
Customers simply enter their what3words address in a dedicated field at checkout, as well as their street address.
‘Just like some of our fruit and vegetables, addresses can sometimes be a bit wonky. Customers can get their rescued veg delivered to exactly the right place with just 3 words!’
Drew Hutchinson, Logistics Manager
Oddbox
It’s easy to include a what3words address box at checkout with plugins for popular platforms and tools like Shopify, Magento and more.
Once collected, what3words addresses can be passed on to delivery companies to make sure orders arrive in the right place.
When you type a street address into an online map or navigation app, it generates a pin. But for many UK homes that pin isn’t in the right place at all, and it often doesn’t locate the front door.
Inaccurate addresses have a clear impact on deliveries: 70% of the UK population have had their deliveries lost or delivered to the wrong address before, with almost 1 in 5 (19%) finding that it happens regularly.*
*Survey results based on research conducted by OnePoll to 2,000 adults in the UK aged 18+ (2022)
No they don’t. what3words addresses should be used alongside regular street addresses as a way to provide extra accuracy.
That’s ok – the field is entirely optional so customers aren’t obliged to use it and will be able to continue their checkout experience as usual using their regular street address.
To nudge customers towards using a what3words address, we recommend including a tooltip which gives them information about it and can link them to where they can find their what3words address.
To increase the number of customers who do provide a what3words address, we recommend promoting it in your social media and newsletters. You’ll find handy resources including wording and images here .
When you use our tools to add a what3words box to your checkout, it includes our smart AutoSuggest technology. This validates that a correct whatwords address has been entered. It also helps customers to enter what3words addresses correctly and avoid mistakes by displaying a dropdown list of suggested options as they type. For greater accuracy and reliability, you can choose to limit the locations geographically e.g. to your chosen shipping countries.
Yes – collecting what3words addresses on your e-commerce checkout is free, and will always be free. Most e-commerce businesses will then pass the what3words addresses to a delivery company.
If your business needs to convert what3words addresses into coordinates, for example to do your own deliveries, this can be done for free using the what3words app .
Failed deliveries cost time and money dealing with queries and redeliveries. According to Loqate, the average cost of each failed delivery is £14*, and Sorted estimates that on average, each WISMO (‘Where is my order?’) contact cost between £4 and £6.**
Failed deliveries also lead to bad reviews, social media complaints and reputational damage. When a delivery goes poorly, 94% blame the retailer, while as few as 42% blame the delivery provider.***
Sources:
*
Fixing Failed Deliveries:
survey of over 3,000 global consumers and 300 retail executives run by Loqate GBG in 2020
**
The Real Cost Of The Retail Wismo Problem… And How To Reduce It.
by Sorted. in 2021
***
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/12/prweb13906413.htm