30/06/2025

Checkout abandonment is a silent profit killer for ecommerce businesses. In a market where competition is fierce and customer expectations are sky-high, even minor friction at checkout can send shoppers packing. One of the most overlooked but costly sources of churn? Slow, error-prone address entry.

The real cost of slow and inaccurate address entry

Every extra second a customer spends at checkout increases the risk they’ll drop out. Manual address entry is slow, tedious, and prone to mistakes. Typos, missing information, or incorrect postcodes are common, especially when customers are in a hurry or on mobile.

These errors don’t just frustrate shoppers, they create a chain reaction of operational headaches for your business. When address data is wrong, the pain doesn’t stop at checkout. Inaccurate addresses lead to:

  • Failed deliveries and returns
  • Extra customer service workload
  • Wasted shipping costs
  • Damaged reputation and lost repeat business

The cost of failed deliveries is staggering. Retailers in the UK lose an average of £183,000 a year through lost or failed deliveries, with each failed delivery costing around £14.35 (1). The total cost of delivery failures for UK based retailers is estimated at £771 million annually (2).

Almost 3 in 4 shoppers have experienced late or failed deliveries and expect the retailer to resolve delivery issues regardless of who’s at fault (1). This means your brand is always on the hook.

Swiftcomplete: address entry up to 90% faster

Swiftcomplete is a modern, flexible address validation solution built for today’s ecommerce needs. Using autocomplete technology, Swiftcomplete looks up and automatically completes a customer’s address as soon as they start typing a postcode, street or what3words.

With Swiftcomplete, shoppers can enter their delivery address up to 90% faster than manual typing, removing the friction from your checkout, as well as reducing the risk of bad address data.

Swiftcomplete will provide you with:

  • Instant, accurate address validation: no more typos or missing fields
  • Cloud-based for speed and reliability with average latency of just 6ms
  • Comprehensive address data including what3words, multi-residence, and new builds
  • Seamless integration with Shopify Plus, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, and Ecwid
Image: Using Swiftcomplete to enter an address in a few clicks

Ready to speed up checkout?

Stop letting slow, inaccurate address entry impact your checkout experience. With Swiftcomplete, you can:

  • Reduce checkout abandonment
  • Cut failed delivery costs
  • Improve customer satisfaction

Get in touch for a demo and see how Swiftcomplete can transform your checkout experience. To integrate Swiftcomplete, visit what3words.com/swiftcomplete for access to our ecommerce plugins and API.