Summary
- Poor-quality customer data captured during checkout can lead to failed deliveries, missed communications, wasted marketing spend and a poorer customer experience.
- Real-time validation of addresses, email addresses and phone numbers helps Shopify merchants capture accurate, trusted customer data from the first interaction.
- Shopify-native validation solutions enable retailers to scale confidently during peak trading periods without adding friction to the checkout journey.
According to Gartner, the digital commerce platform software market reached $10.2 billion in software revenue in 2024, representing 14% YoY growth (up from 11.2% in 2023)” ¹. Retailers have never had access to more customer data. Every click, purchase and interaction creates valuable insight that can help improve customer experiences, marketing performance and operational efficiency.
Yet many ecommerce businesses overlook a simple problem: poor-quality customer data entering their systems during checkout.
Mistyped addresses, invalid email addresses and incorrect phone numbers can lead to failed deliveries, missed customer communications, wasted marketing spend and frustrated shoppers.
At scale, these issues quickly become expensive.
In fact, Experian processed 260 million data validation requests during Cyber Week 2025 alone, highlighting the importance of capturing trusted customer data during periods of peak demand.
Fortunately, Shopify merchants can address these challenges by validating customer addresses, email addresses and phone numbers in real time during checkout.
What is Shopify contact data validation?
Contact data validation helps retailers verify and standardise customer information as it is entered.
Instead of allowing incorrect information to pass into your ecommerce platform, validation technology automatically checks postal addresses, email addresses and phone numbers against trusted reference data before the customer completes their purchase.
This helps ensure customer records are accurate, complete and ready to support fulfilment, marketing and customer engagement from day one.
Why customer data quality matters for Shopify merchants
For most retailers, checkout is the single most important stage of the customer journey.
A customer may have spent time browsing products, comparing prices and filling their basket. But if the information captured during checkout is inaccurate, problems begin immediately.
Invalid addresses create fulfilment issues
Address errors can result in:
- Failed deliveries
- Return shipments
- Customer service enquiries
- Refund and redelivery costs
Even a missing apartment number or postcode can prevent a successful first-time delivery.
Invalid email addresses reduce marketing performance
Email remains one of the most valuable channels available to ecommerce marketers.
However, when customers enter incorrect or inactive email addresses, businesses risk:
- Losing order confirmation communications
- Missing delivery notifications
- Increasing email bounce rates
- Reducing campaign effectiveness
Incorrect phone numbers create communication gaps
Phone numbers are increasingly important for:
- SMS updates
- Delivery notifications
- Customer support
- Fraud prevention
Capturing invalid numbers means important communications may never reach customers.
Together, these issues reduce the quality of customer data available to the business and make it more difficult to personalise experiences or make confident business decisions.
The benefits of validating customer data at checkout
Improve conversion
Validation technology helps streamline the checkout process through intelligent autocomplete and real-time verification.
Customers spend less time completing forms and are more likely to complete their purchase successfully.
Improve delivery success
Address validation helps merchants capture complete, correctly formatted delivery information before orders are placed.
This reduces failed deliveries and improves fulfilment accuracy.
Build trusted customer data
Validated customer information enters your CRM and marketing systems in a cleaner, more consistent format.
This improves the quality of customer profiles, reporting and analytics.
Maximise marketing ROI
When communications are sent to valid contact details, businesses can reduce wasted marketing spend and increase engagement with real customers.
Validated data helps ensure emails and promotions reach genuine recipients.
Scale with confidence
As transaction volumes increase, manual verification becomes impossible.
Validation technology enables retailers to maintain customer data quality during peak periods such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday without affecting the customer experience.
How Shopify data validation works
Since Shopify is the most popular global platform for ecommerce², it makes sense that bespoke Shopify ecommerce address validation solutions are available.
Capturing trusted customer data doesn’t need to create friction during checkout.
A modern Shopify validation solution works in real time.
- Install the app from the Shopify App Store
- The customer’s address, email and phone number is automatically checked, corrected and properly formatted in real-time, without impacting the customer experience
What should retailers look for in a validation solution?
Global address coverage
Businesses operating internationally need a solution capable of validating addresses worldwide.
Experian supports address validation across 250+ countries and territories, helping retailers deliver consistent experiences globally.
Email validation
Email validation helps identify:
- Invalid addresses
- Disposable email accounts
- Mistyped entries
- Inactive addresses
- Undeliverable email accounts
before they affect customer communications.
Phone validation
Phone validation should verify syntax, existence and formatting while accounting for regional differences.
Experian validates phone numbers against 1,500+ global telecommunications providers, helping improve communication accuracy.
Native Shopify integration
Retailers should consider solutions that integrate directly into Shopify without extensive development effort.
A native integration helps simplify deployment and reduce operational complexity.
Why Experian Data Validation for Shopify?
Experian has over 30 years of experience helping organisations improve data intelligence and customer engagement.
In 2025 alone, Experian’s validation solutions processed:
- 6.4 billion addresses
- 1 billion email addresses
- 162 million phone numbers
demonstrating the scale and reliability required to support retailers worldwide.
Experian Data Validation for Shopify combines:
- Global address validation
- Real-time email validation
- Real-time phone validation
- Intelligent autocomplete
- No-code implementation
- Enterprise-ready scalability
- 24/7 global support
within a single Shopify-native solution.
Contact Validation: A Real Life eCommerce Case Study
Bunches is one of the UK’s leading online florists, delivering gifts for birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions nationwide. With more than 90% of orders being sent directly to recipients rather than the purchaser, even minor address errors could result in failed deliveries, disappointed customers and wasted stock. As the business continued to grow online, ensuring accurate customer data at the point of checkout became increasingly important. The company turned to Experian’s Address Validation solution to help improve delivery accuracy and streamline the customer experience.
By implementing Experian’s real-time address validation technology, Bunches was able to reduce address errors before orders were submitted, helping customers find and enter the correct delivery address quickly and accurately. This led to faster checkout experiences, fewer delivery issues and lower operational costs. The solution also reduced data entry time by 80%, saving 2,085 hours and eliminating 27 million keystrokes, while helping ensure flowers arrived fresh and on time.
Elliot Reed, Head of Engineering at Bunches, said:
“Our 20-year partnership with Experian has been instrumental in our growth. Their Address Validation solution has been a game-changer for us. Real-time search has virtually eliminated address errors. This has saved us time and money, and most importantly, ensured our customers receive their flowers on time. The implementation was quick and easy, and the support from Experian has been excellent.”
How can we help?
Every customer interaction starts with customer data.
When addresses, email addresses or phone numbers are inaccurate, retailers can experience unnecessary costs, poor customer experiences and reduced marketing effectiveness.
Experian Data Validation for Shopify helps retailers capture, standardise and validate customer information in real time, creating a trusted foundation for fulfilment, customer communications and business growth.
Whether you’re looking to reduce failed deliveries, improve checkout conversion or maximise the value of your customer data, validating information at the point of entry can make a measurable difference.
Get in touch
Learn how Experian Data Validation for Shopify can help you create better customer experiences and build trusted customer data from the first interaction.
Let's talk[1] Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce, Gartner 2025
[2] Most Popular Ecommerce Platforms (2026 Stats), Ecommerce Gold 2026