WooCommerce Address Validation With UPS Shipping Plugin

With this guide, we’ll show you the working of WooCommerce Address Validation on the Cart page using the WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin. We will take a real business case to help you understand the address validation check process better.

WooCommerce Address Validation for Live Shipping Rates

WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin is packed with all the features one would expect from an enterprise-level online shipping solution. Tasks like displaying real-time shipping rates directly from UPS, printing labels, tracking shipments, and generating labels in bulk are all handled beautifully with no hiccups.

One of the many useful features of this plugin is WooCommerce Address Validation. This vital feature is quite necessary to ship different kinds of items.

Let’s take the example of a store owner who had trouble understanding the concept of it, and was facing difficulty configuring this feature with the WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin.

Hello. I wondering how the WooCommerce Address Validation Verification feature works in your plugin. I wanted to enable this verification feature and use it on my Cart page. Also, is there a way to automatically make the city and state appear in the address fields by entering only the Zip Code? How do I configure this?


WooCommerce Address Validation using PluginHive UPS Shipping plugin

The WooCommerce Address Validation feature provides direct automated integration between your WooCommerce website and UPS API. The API checks a customer’s address and provides suggested alternatives if an error is discovered.

Whether built into your public website or integrated with your internal systems, this API can help you reduce operating costs and improve customer service.

The address validation verification feature is an essential part of UPS Shipping and the WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin provides it to its users. The plugin also offers a feature indicated by the image below.

address validation verification


By enabling this option, the WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin will assume every address as Residential and will send the request to UPS every time a new order is placed. This option will enable store owners who ship across residential addresses and want the address to be automatically marked residential.

no woocommerce shipping method with incorrect zip code

If you decide to disable the above-mentioned option, the address will be automatically categorized as a Commercial or Residential address by the UPS API.

ups shipping rates after a valid zip code

The API will automatically determine the address and based on its type will return shipping rates for your shipments. So you may leave it unchecked if you wish to ship to both commercial and residential addresses. You can learn more about UPS Residential Address shipping.


Why are Residential Rates higher than Commercial Rates?

If you have ever shipped any package using UPS Shipping services, you may be well aware of the fact that UPS charges differently for different address types. Based on the address, UPS may charge you less if the address provided by you is a Commercial Address. Whereas, if the address is a Residential Address, UPS generally charges more shipping charges.

UPS ships items to two types of locations—Commercial/Business and Residential. Commercial addresses are generally the locations that are considered commercial real estate. These locations are usually classified as a warehouse that has tractor-trailer access and a loading dock.

Residential addresses, on the other hand, are any business location that is operated from a home, apartment, or any other similar area where people live. Delivery trucks usually enter these areas to perform the final delivery. In addition, the overall shipping charges are slightly higher than that of commercial addresses.


Would the WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin automatically make city and state appear in the address field by entering only the Zip code?

No.

Any address can be recognized as Commercial/Residential only when the ‘Street Address’ line details are provided on the checkout page. WooCommerce, by default, does not provide an option to enter Address Street Lines on the Cart page.

Additionally, the Cart and Checkout pages are provided by WooCommerce itself. WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin will only display the rates and services received from UPS API. So the plugin does not have any control over these fields and is completely handled by WooCommerce and the theme used by the store owner.


What is the Address Suggestion option from UPS?

address validation verification suggestion

You can enable the above option to get real-time address suggestions directly from UPS. The WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin directly interacts with the UPS Database to validate all the addresses in real time. This feature can be really useful, especially when you want to help your customers check their addresses on the Cart page.


WooCommerce Address Validation for other Shipping services like FedEx and Canada Post

Just like UPS, FedEx also offers the FedEx Address Validation feature to WooCommerce users. With the help of the WooCommerce FedEx Shipping Plugin, you can easily confirm if the address entered into the form is a valid address or not.

Notifications, error messages, and pop-ups generally appear in instances when an address that is entered fails its FedEx Address Validation check. This prevents the customer from proceeding with their checkout until and unless a valid address has been entered.

Here’s an interesting article on How Address Validation and Residential Shipping work in FedEx. You can read it to understand the FedEx address validation process in WooCommerce and Shopify.

Coming over to the Canada Post users, the WooCommerce Canada Post Shipping plugin works in a similar fashion and provides the address validation on the checkout. You can read the article on How to Set up Canada Post Address Validation in WooCommerce to know more.


Conclusion

We hope this guide has cleared some of your doubts regarding the Address Validation Verification feature and how it works in the WooCommerce UPS Shipping plugin. To learn more about the features, kindly check out the product page.

If you have any doubts or need help setting up UPS shipping on your WooCommerce-based website then feel free to Contact PluginHive Customer Support. Our support team should be able to help you out.

Good luck!