In addition to Address Verification, Bolt Checkout uses Address Validation to ensure that a customer has entered a valid shipping address. This reduces support overhead and minimizes shipping mistakes and delays.
Address validation has three components:
Address Matching
During Address Matching, Bolt will compare the address entered in checkout to a third-party address verification database, Lob. If any of the address fields entered by the customer do not match the validated fields in the database, Bolt will automatically update the address to the validated address. Customers are given the opportunity to opt-out of address updates, as shown below in Address Fixing.
Address Fixing
If Bolt updates a customer's address to a validated address, as outlined above, they will see a notice that their address has been updated and will be given the option to review.
Review
If a customer clicks REVIEW, they will see their original address and the validated address, and will be able to toggle between the two. If the customer chooses their original address instead of the corrected address, the shipping options will reload. If they go to the Payment page and return to Delivery page the validation interface will be hidden and they will just see the standard page with their address.
Address Reentry
If a customer's address is updated to a validated address, they may still choose to reenter their address by going back to the Shipping page of the checkout experience. If a customer manually reenters their address and continues on to the Delivery page, Bolt will not rerun validation on that element and will accept the address as entered. This ensures that customers do not edit their address to correct validation, only to have their address changed by validation again. However, if another error occurs that error will be corrected. For example, if you enter an address with no valid city you will be prompted to fix the city. If you do make the correction but now the zip code is in error, the zip code will be corrected.
Address Validation FAQs
Why does Bolt proactively update the address instead of making the user choose? — Bolt is dedicated to eliminating friction in the checkout experience. Bolt has concluded that address validation is generally correct, and so burdening the customer with the choice over small tweaks in their address is unnecessary. Customers will still be able to opt-out of the change, but in most situations, this should be an improvement for customers.
If 'Street' not 'St.' is used will customers be prompted to correct their address? — Validation will only be triggered when there’s a major issue with the address (such as a mistaken zip code or invalid street name). Bolt will ignore updates that are simply updating to abbreviations.