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Black Friday and Cyber Monday

It's never too early to start planning for Balck Friday and Cyber Monday

With online retail’s busiest day of the year approaching make sure your business is ready by topping up your Postcodes4U credits!!
Log in to your account over at www.postcodes4u.co.uk and find a price package that suits you.

Black Friday Cyber Monday

nopCommerce free address lookup plugin

Do you have a #nopcommerce website? If so we provide a free address lookup plugin for all versions of Nop http://plugins.3xsoftware.co.uk/

Contact Form 7

Following feedback and requests from our customers we have made considerable changes to our Contact form 7 to make it even better.

It allows Postcode Address Lookup to be added to your WooCommerce Checkout pages as well as Contact Form 7 and Gravity Form pages. Also allows multiple forms

Easy integration into any other WordPress Page.

Also includes our own customisable Contact Form with Postcode lookup that can be added to any of your pages.

You can download here using this link:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/postcodes4u-address-finder/ 

Postcodes4u COntact Form & Gravity Form

Voted Website of the Month

We are thrilled to be have been chosen as website of the month from Many thanks 


Abandoned Carts/Baskets

Cart/Basket Abandonment

The biggest factor behind people abandoning their shopping cards isn’t what you might think. There are a number of reason why people abandon their cards here are number of them

Cart Abandonment

The main reasons are:

The shopper had to create an account – always allow shoppers to use a Guest Checkout option. You can always give them the option to set up an account later in the order confirmation email.

Checkout process was too long, try and simplify the checkout process wherever you can, use one-page checkout if possible and if an customer has logged in to their account pre fill as many fields you can.

Customer couldn’t see the total order cost – try and make the full order cost visible on the page don’t let the total become a shock to the customer so they abandon the whole of the cart.

Your website had errors and crashed, well you would never want this to happen but sadly it does from time to time and is sometimes out of your control.

 

Some of the next ones might surprise you:

Customers didn’t trust the site with their card information, with the introduction of secure sites using SSL, PCI DSS and 3D authentication the concerns here should have reduced and improved shopper confidence.

Delivery was too slow; the amount of delivery options available now should enable a site to meet the demands of the shopper. In general people are quite happy to pay more for delivery if they want it quicker

As much as retailers don’t like returns its essential to make the Return policy clear and easy to follow

You need to give your shopper options for making payments, it is unusual to not have enough payment methods, but it could also be just as bad to have to many and give the shopper too many options to choose from.

Surprisingly the reason with the least abandonments is if the Customers card is declined.

 
So what’s the biggest reason!

 

EXTRA COSTS on CHECKOUT the main ones being Shipping, taxes and fees.

There is very little you can do about the Taxes. You can do something about the shipping though. Have a clear shipping asnd pricing  policy. If the customer has an account try and use the default shipping address to calculate the shipping cost.

Make sure the address is accurate buy using a postcode address lookup service like our at www.Postcodes4u.co.uk . This way if the shipping address is changed then recalculate the shipping cost but at least you have included some shipping cost and the overall total doesn’t shoot up significantly at Checkout. 

 

Why use a Postcode Address Lookup service?

 

Shortens Checkout Time

Having an address lookup finder on your checkout to fill in the form for you reduces work for your customer, making it less likely that they will lose interest.

 Alleviates Fear

With a postcode lookup service, you can reduce this fear; an address lookup service helps give your business legitimacy and helps potential customers know that you are credible when you are using a trusted Royal Mail address database!

Builds Trust

It is pivotal to build bridges with potential customers by letting them know you care about their buying experience, and an address lookup is a great way of doing that.

When a customer sees that you can access their address from a database, they can trust that the delivery process is a legitimate one and that their package will reach them without complications.

No Royal Mail Increase from Postcodes4u

Royal Mail are putting up their PAF prices on 1st July by 5% BUT we are NOT passing on the increase to you!

We are committed to trying to provide the best value to our customers. 

Royal Mail have quoted "Continued changes to the mix of End User licensing and increased costs mean that we need to review our prices to ensure that we can continue to maintain PAF® accuracy and data quality"

This year we have decided NOT to pass on the increase to you so you can carry on with your business without worrying about increased cost. 

Please remember if you need any help integrating our service just contact us and our team are only too happy to help.

 

Royal Mail PAF stats for June

The June statistics for the Postcode Address File (PAF®) from Royal Mail

The Royal Mail have started issuing monthly stats on the updates to postcode address finder data.

+24,000
Additional delivery points added to PAF this month
30,257,585
Total number of actual Delivery Points on PAF
1,764,726
Total number of Postcodes on PAF
1500
Total number of Post Towns on PAF
1,332,536
Total number of business names held on PAF
For more information you can see the full infomaiton onthe Royla Mail website here https://www.poweredbypaf.com/the-june-statistics-for-the-postcode-address-file-paf-are-now-available/
Prepare your Ecommerce Store For Black Friday
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are huge opportunities for any ecommerce trader. Last year the total spend on online retail sites on Black Friday was £1.23 BILLION so it’s no surprise that this year more websites are set to get involved than ever before! If you’re one of these websites are you prepared?
3 Ways an Address Lookup Can Reduce Basket Abandonment

For most e-Commerce businesses, a chief concern is how to transform ‘website visitors’ into customers.

In 2015, overall basket abandonment rates were estimated at an astonishing 76.6%! That means a whopping three-quarters of your audience leave before purchasing!

Despite these astronomical figures, it is possible to convert some of these ‘abandoners’ into repeat customers.

The formula can be difficult to master, but there are a few tricks to use to try and boost numbers in your favour. Here are three ways that an address lookup service can reduce basket abandonment on your e-Commerce site.

 

1) Shortens Checkout Time

Most e-Commerce blogs will advise you to simplify your checkout forms; the more work you leave your customers to do, the less likely they are to complete it.

Having an address lookup service to fill in the form for you reduces work for your customer, making it less likely that they will lose interest.

 

2) Alleviates Fear

The web is still a scary place for a lot of users. Even in 2016, some customers still don’t like putting their financial details on the internet.

With a postcode lookup service you can reduce this fear; an address lookup service helps give your business legitimacy and helps potential customers know that you are.

It especially helps your site’s credibility when you are using a trusted Royal Mail address database!

 

3) Builds Trust

If your checkout forms fail to build trust and credibility, it’s likely that you’re losing out on a lot of potential business.

It is pivotal to build bridges with potential customers by letting them know you care about their buying experience, and an address lookup is a great way of doing that.

When a customer sees that you can access their address from a database, they can trust that the delivery process is a legitimate one and that their package will reach them without complications.

  

If you’re still not convinced, why not explore www.postcodes4u.co.uk and learn about all the other ways that an address lookup service can be beneficial to your e-Commerce business.

Improving E-Commerce customer satisfaction

Ecommerce customer satisfaction

No matter how technologically reliant the world becomes, Britain will always need post.

According to figures from the Office for National Statistic, online stores now account for 13.2% of all retail sales. With more and more shoppers choosing to buy online, E-Commerce sites have to rely on postal services to ship their goods, meaning that your customer satisfaction is in the hands of the postman.

 

Unfortunately, as the Royal Mail say on their own website, “sometimes things go wrong”.

Royal Mail doesn’t guarantee delivery of items; they lose thousands of letters and parcels every week. The organization claimed 2012 that they receive one complaint per 13,000 items of mail on average. With 15.9 BILLION pieces of mail delivered each year in Britain, we are left with over a million dissatisfied British customers annually.

In Royal Mail’s defense, they perform a thankless task. There is a myriad of things that may go wrong, chief among them being incorrect addresses. Addresses can be complicated things to jot down at times, and the likelihood of a mistake either in writing or reading complicated addresses is high.

 

For E-Commerce businesses in particular, this can be a problem. Businesses are often required to pay for lost items, as well as the embarrassment that this causes. All it takes is one item to be labelled incorrectly for customers to be lost.

 

One way to minimize this is by using an address lookup service such as Postcodes4U.  Postcodes4U uses Postcode Address File (PAF®) from the Royal Mail, meaning they use the most up-to-date and complete address database in the UK containing over 28 million addresses.

For respectable e-commerce sites, a postcode address lookup is a handy customer service tool. Not only does it minimize time spent filling out address forms, it also assures the customer that their address will be recorded and sent out in a trusted, official format.