In today’s highly competitive and rapidly evolving world of E-commerce Best Practices, collecting customers’ phone numbers is imperative. It helps with communication, order processing, customer service, and timely product delivery. You can also maintain a customer phone number validator tool database for offers and promotional SMS messages.
However, this is only possible if you have accurate phone number data. In fact, phone number verification isn’t an option for e-commerce businesses but a necessity, and it plays a pivotal role in their success. This is where a phone validator comes in handy. From maintaining a clean customer database and capturing authentic leads to preventing fraud, a reliable phone number validator tool can help an e-commerce business through E-commerce Best Practices.
This article will explore the basic concept of phone number validation, its importance and benefits for e-commerce businesses, and phone number validation best practices in e-commerce. We’ll also introduce you to one of the most accurate and reliable phone validator tools called Numverify.
Table of Contents
What is a Phone Validator?
A phone number validator is a software tool that allows you to verify phone numbers. Users just need to provide the phone number they want to validate, and the tool verifies the authenticity and accuracy of the number. Some tools also support bulk phone number validation to save time.
An efficient phone validation tool, such as a phone validation API, usually provides the following information:
- Existence of the Phone Number: Verifies whether the given phone number exists and is currently used by someone.
- Format Validation: Checks if the given phone number format is correct according to the format of a specific region of the country.
- Phone Line Type Identification: Identifies the line type of phone number, such as landline, mobile, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) numbers. Efficient phone validators can validate different types of phone numbers, such as personal and business numbers, landline phone numbers, mobile numbers, etc.
- Carrier Details: Some tools also provide carrier details associated with the phone number.
- Location Information: An efficient phone validator tool also provides location information associated with the phone number, including country and city.
Why Phone Number Validation is Crucial in E-commerce?
E-commerce businesses worldwide collect the phone numbers of their customers through form submissions for various purposes, such as order processing, communication, customer service, and timely delivery of orders. Ensuring that the phone numbers you collect are valid and up-to-date is crucial for a successful e-commerce operation.
Here are some key reasons why validating phone numbers is essential for e-commerce businesses:
Effective Communication with Customers
Effective communication between an e-commerce business and customers is the key to enhancing the customer experience. It helps businesses contact customers to resolve issues, provide order updates, and send delivery notifications. However, this communication is only possible if you have the correct phone numbers of your customers.
Customers sometimes provide incorrect numbers mistakenly. By validating phone numbers, you can identify invalid phone numbers and request customers to provide the correct version. On the other hand, if you don’t validate phone numbers, you might be sending order updates and delivery notifications to the wrong numbers. This leads to customer frustration, resulting in negative reviews and lost revenue. Moreover, contacting customers on invalid numbers results in wasted time and resources.
Order Verification and Confirmation
Accurate phone numbers help e-commerce businesses send order verification and confirmation messages to customers. This, in turn, helps them ensure that customers receive the right products, leading to customer satisfaction. However, without order verification and confirmation, businesses may have to bear the costs of returns.
Timely Delivery of Products
Phone number verification and validation are also helpful in delivering products on time. When businesses have accurate customer phone numbers, they can effectively coordinate delivery times with customers. This ensures that customers receive orders when expected. Moreover, valid phone numbers also help businesses with address verification and receipt availability.
On the contrary, invalid or incorrect phone numbers can result in failed deliveries. For instance, you can’t coordinate delivery details or confirm the recipient’s availability with an inaccurate phone number. This leads to customer dissatisfaction and also results in additional costs for redelivery.
Customer Service
Valid and accurate phone numbers of customers enable e-commerce businesses to improve their customer service, resulting in satisfied customers. For instance, businesses can directly contact customers to resolve their issues, address concerns, and respond to their queries.
SMS Marketing
SMS marketing is an effective way to capture leads and promote products. In SMS marketing, businesses send promotional messages and offers to phone numbers in their customer database. Using a phone number validation tool, e-commerce businesses can maintain a clean marketing database with authentic and genuine phone numbers. This helps them ensure their messages reach the intended audience.
On the other hand, sending text messages to invalid phone numbers means your target audience never received those messages. This results in ineffective marketing and wasted resources.
Fraud Prevention
A phone validator can also serve as a powerful tool for fraud prevention. For instance, it can help businesses confirm customers’ identity during registration or checkout. E-commerce businesses can also implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) or 2-factor authentication (2FA) and use customers’ phone numbers to verify their identity.
To learn more, read our detailed article on fraud prevention with Numlookup API.
Introduction to Numverify: A Phone Number Validation Solution
Numverify is a leading phone number validation and lookup API supporting 232 countries worldwide. The fully-featured REST API offers real-time results and delivers them in easy-to-read JSON format. Moreover, the API uses industry-standard 256-bit HTTPS encryption to ensure a secure connection to the API. Thousands of businesses worldwide use Numverify to maintain a clean customer database for SMS marketing, capture good leads, and prevent fraud by validating national and international phone numbers at the point of entry into their system.
E-commerce Best Practices: Features
Here are the key features of the Numverify API:
- The powerful phone validator API supports both national and international phone number validation and supports as many as 232 countries worldwide. These include the USA, Brazil, Albania, Spain, and more.
- In addition to validating a phone number, the API returns detailed information associated with the number. For instance, the API can detect the line type of a phone number, such as mobile, landline, toll-free, and business numbers. It also provides valuable carrier information and geographic data, including country and location.
- Numverify also has an efficient format validation system powered by regularly updated international phone numbering plans.
- The API secures all the data sent to and from the API using industry-standard 256-bit HTTPS encryption.
- The API has interactive and detailed documentation containing all the information regarding the API endpoints, parameters, and methods. The documentation also has various coding examples to help you get started quickly.
- Numverify is a robust, free phone validation tool. It allows you to validate 1000 phone numbers per month for free. Moreover, the API also comes with several flexible pricing plans offering premium features.
Best Practices for Phone Number Validation in E-commerce
1. Transparency in Data Collection
Collecting customers’ phone numbers while ensuring their consent is crucial for e-commerce businesses. It helps to comply with privacy laws and regulations and build customer trust. Thus, businesses should define a clear privacy policy and outline how they collect, store, and use customer data.
2. Utilizing a Reliable Phone Validator
Using a reliable phone number validation tool like Numverify API helps ensure data accuracy, which is crucial for the success of an e-commerce business. For instance, Numverify has dependable databases and an efficient format validation system to provide highly accurate results.
3. Preventing Fraud and Fake Accounts
Phone number validation is a powerful technique to curb fraudulent activities. You can use it to confirm customers’ identity during registration or checkout and implement MFA and 2FA to prevent chargebacks, fake returns, and vendor scams.
4. Improved Customer Communication
Valid and accurate phone numbers are fundamental for effective communication with customers. Businesses can contact customers for order confirmation, order status, and updates, resolve issues, and provide delivery updates.
5. Enhanced Delivery and Customer Service
E-commerce businesses can also utilize a phone validator to ensure the timely delivery of products and enhance customer service. For instance, businesses can contact customers to coordinate delivery times, ensure the availability of the recipient, etc.
6. Reducing Undelivered messages
Businesses can use phone number validation to reduce the likelihood of undelivered messages by ensuring they send messages to valid numbers only. Moreover, they can identify the line type to ensure they send messages to numbers that accept text messages, such as mobile numbers.
7. Leveraging User Feedback for Continuous Improvement
User feedback is an effective tool to improve business procedures and performance and enhance the overall user experience. Businesses can implement effective feedback mechanisms, such as surveys and feedback forms, to collect feedback on the phone number validation process.
Implementing Best Practices with Numverify
Numverify is a reliable phone validator API for implementing the above best practices. The API is known for processing requests in real time and for high data accuracy. It has a robust format validation system powered by regularly updated international phone numbering plans. The real-time and accurate phone number validation enables effective communication with customers and helps prevent fraud. You can also legitimize customers by retrieving carrier details of their phone numbers. Moreover, with Numverify’s line type detection, you can reduce the occurrences of undelivered messages.
Find below a simple way of using jQuery.ajax to verify a phone number:
// set endpoint and your access key
var access_key = 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY';
var phone_number = '14158586273';
// verify phone number via AJAX call
$.ajax({
url: 'http://apilayer.net/api/validate?access_key=' + access_key + '&number=' + phone_number,
dataType: 'jsonp',
success: function(json) {
// Access and use your preferred validation result objects
console.log(json.valid);
console.log(json.country_code);
console.log(json.carrier);
}
});
Please note: In this example, the use of JSONP is entirely optional.
Learn more in our comprehensive documentation.
E-commerce Best Practices: Conclusion
Phone number validation is indispensable to the success of e-commerce businesses. It ensures seamless communication with customers and timely delivery of products. Moreover, it helps improve customer service and prevent fraud. However, businesses must choose a reliable and accurate phone validator to reap these benefits. Numverify API is an example of such a phone validator that processes requests in real time and validates phone numbers accurately. Moreover, the API supports 232 countries worldwide and can validate both national and international phone numbers.
Sign up for Numverify API and take your e-commerce business to the next level!
E-commerce Best Practices: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why is phone number validation important for e-commerce businesses?
Phone number validation is crucial for e-commerce because it helps ensure the accuracy of customer contact information, reduces fraud, and improves the overall customer experience. It also aids in targeted marketing and personalized communication.
What are the common issues e-commerce businesses face when dealing with invalid phone numbers?
E-commerce businesses often encounter issues like undeliverable orders, incorrect shipping information, and difficulty in reaching customers. Invalid phone numbers can result in missed sales opportunities and negatively impact customer trust.
How can a phone validator API enhance e-commerce operations through the e-commerce best practices?
A phone validator API can streamline e-commerce operations by instantly verifying phone numbers during the checkout process. It helps prevent fraudulent orders, improves delivery success rates, and enables businesses to send order updates and promotional messages to valid phone numbers, enhancing customer engagement.
