As ecommerce continues to dominate how businesses and consumers buy and sell, the stakes around delivery accuracy have never been higher.
One wrong address can trigger a costly domino effect – from missed deadlines to lost revenue and damaged reputation.
With consumer habits increasingly anchored in online shopping, getting the delivery address right the first time is essential. In this blog we look at three things that can go wrong when a delivery misses the mark:
1. Impact On Logistics And Profits
Your company’s logistics and profits are also at stake when a delivery goes wrong.
After all, over 40% of online shoppers now expect retailers to proactively re-route misdelivered packages without requiring customer follow-up.
But meeting these expectations comes at a cost. Failed deliveries are now draining £1.6 billion annually from UK retailers, with individual businesses losing an average of nearly £200,000 each year due to redelivery, customer service strain and lost sales.
Carriers aren’t spared either, facing mounting operational overheads and reputational damage. The result? a direct hit to profit margins, brand loyalty, and long-term growth.
Online shopping in the UK and Europe grew by 18% in Q2 2025, with a sharp 25% spike in June alone driven by seasonal demand and shifting consumer habits.
But with economic uncertainty still looming, businesses can’t afford to let operational inefficiencies eat into their margins.
Delivering to the right person at the right address isn’t just about logistics, it’s also the key to profit protection. Every failed delivery chips away at customer trust, brand reputation, and bottom-line performance.
2. Lost Customers
Customers won’t wait around for companies who fail to deliver purchases to the correct address.
People expect a level of service that is quick and effective, and when a delivery goes wrong, their unfulfilled expectations will prompt them to seek solace elsewhere.
13% of dissatisfied customers will tell 15 or more people about their bad experience. As a result, word of mouth may lead to damaged brand reputation, which could result in more lost customers over time.
This could prove a real challenge for businesses, as acquiring a new customer now costs between 5 and 7 times more than retaining an existing one, depending on the industry.
In sectors like SaaS and fintech, that gap can be even wider due to long sales cycles and high onboarding costs
3. Hindered Business Analysis
Whilst you may not be currently prioritising business analysis, actually doing so will pay dividends in the future.
Albeit less obvious than the previous two effects, having incorrect address information about your customers can greatly hinder analytical activities.
Data collection can also vary in structure and quality due to the different ways it is collected throughout a company.
By having an address lookup feature on website forms and in CRM’s an organisation can capture and verify data in a standard, easily integrated structure.
This means an organisation can accurately capture address data at source so that there are fewer problems with new data further down the road.
This greatly improves the usability of the data resulting in a far greater chance of accurate business analysis.
For example, you may wish to segment customers and prospects based on geographic location. However, failed deliveries because of inaccurate address data would suggest errors or inconsistencies within your database. Analysis becomes less effective, subsequently.
Hopewiser’s Solutions Can Prevent Deliveries From Going Wrong
Our own research has shown that a number of ecommerce businesses don’t have an address lookup facility within their website, or are using search engine data to validate delivery information. Both of these methods have problems.
Firstly, we are all used to using methods to quickly find our address online, without having to type it out. Where those facilities are unavailable, it can lead to people abandoning their cart, or worse, putting in an incorrect address because they are typing it out in full.
In fact, in 2025, 1 in 5 shoppers (18%) will abandon their cart solely because the checkout process is too long or complicated.
Secondly, search engine data will not have been verified by a reliable data source. This means it can be radically out of date.
Additionally, it does not use full address matching techniques, leading to incorrect addresses being chosen.
This is especially difficult when businesses are taking orders over the phone using search engines, because it presents the most used address first, rather than the best.
Whilst cheap or free data may seem attractive, the reality could cost you a lot more in the long run.
Enhance your ecommerce website with an address validation solution by Hopewiser to ensure accurate address details are captured at the point of entry. In turn, this will prevent failed deliveries and mitigate the chain reaction that follows.
To find out more, sign up for your FREE trial today:
, updated 11th September 2025.
