In January 1997, AFD Software anticipated the impending business opportunities that the internet and online shopping would bring. “Postcode Internet” was launched, allowing – for the first time – websites accepting orders and capturing customer details to validate the address provided, so making orders easier to complete for the customer, and delivery more accurate and reliable.

Fast-forward to 2020 and AFD’s full range of contact data validation solutions including name, address, bank, email and telephone validation are all available as online solutions.

Millions of online lookups are handled by AFD each year; our solutions help ensure communications are accurate, deliveries go to a valid address, payment details are correct and data entry is lightning fast.

It’s safe to say AFD’s early “hunch” was correct: according to the Office for National Statstics, e-commerce sales by businesses in the UK nonfinancial sector were £688 billion in 2018, rising from £582 billion in 2017.

Abandon ship?
Although e-commerce sales are rapidly growing each year, there is room for improvement around making the customer journey as simple to navigate as possible.

“Cart abandonment” is when an item is added to a basket but not purchased. A recent survey based on data from 41 different studies provided an average cart abandonment rate on e-commerce sites across all sectors at nearly 70%. When using a mobile device to shop online this figure is even higher at just over 80%.

A key reason stated in the survey was the checkout process taking too long to enter all data required and being overly complicated.

AFD’s solutions minimise the complexity and time taken of the checkout process, allowing your site to convert more orders. Customers will benefit from a smooth online shopping experience that they would happily use again.

Expanding Integrations
Our highly experienced teams do not rest on their laurels nor bask in our historical success as online pioneers, they are constantly working on implementation tools for a wide range of web platforms and technologies. AFD has recently added the following to our range of integration options:

jQuery Plugin
Our jQuery plugin makes adding functionality to input controls on web pages simple. The plugin is also compatible with Bootstrap 3 & 4 form validation standards as well as the constraint validation API.

In most cases, the out of the box code will be exactly what is required, however there are many configuration options that will allow developers to implement the desired AFD solution with flexibility. Our experienced support team are on hand to advise in all cases – and if you’ve no idea at all what these geeky terms mean, just give our friendly team a call, and they will help!

Magento 1 & 2
Magento is a highly customisable and robust e-commerce platform with many features. Most importantly, AFD Software is now available as a feature via our Magento Integration Extension which supports both Magento 1 and 2.

Shopify
Another leading e-commerce platform that AFD’s solutions can be integrated within is Shopify. More suitable for organisations without inhouse developers, Shopify is simple to setup and start the process of online-selling.

In short, we have ready-made plugins and integration options to provide access to our powerful range of contact data validation solutions. If you have a system or platform that requires our functionality, we can provide it.

www.afd.co.uk/developers