Why do I need international address validation?

With innumerable formats and unfamiliar spellings, standardizing and validating global address datasets can be a real pain. But it doesn't have to be.

International address validation is an essential part of virtually every business that works with international address data. But how can you keep your address data in multiple countries accurate while not wasting your time and money?

In our recent webinar, Jeffrey Duncan went over the details of international address validation. You can view the recording below, or continue reading for the quick recap.

What makes international addresses so hard?

Without localized knowledge it can be very difficult to understand the addressing nuances of each country. Nearly every country has a different address format. For example, in Germany you list the street name first, and then the house number. In Japan, you’d list the largest identifier first, country, then proceed until you get to the most specific item.

Also, address formats do change on occasion. By using an address validator you can ensure that your data is always up to date. This can be especially useful if your customers are entering in their addresses, but are still putting it in the older format.

The challenge of international addresses is intensified by the fact that language is a barrier. Different character sets, different lettering systems, etc. all contribute to the difficulty in managing international addresses.

Smarty handles all of that for you.

What is international address validation?

Address validation by itself regardless of whether it is specific to one country or for the entire world is the process of taking an input address and normalizing it to where we can understand the concepts of that address and then match that address to a known address in a specific country.

As mentioned above, different countries have different address formats. In order to manage all the address information you’d benefit from having a standardized address database.

What are the limitations of address validation tools?

Results can only be as good as the underlying data. Smarty’s data is updated quarterly from various authoritative sources.

If you are looking for business data in your address database, you’ll be hard-pressed to find the metadata that is available in some countries. No amount of validation or standardization can get you that.

Smarty has a list of the countries we support and the quality of their data that you can view here.

Also, not all countries are supported for transliteration. This is when you take a language and convert it to the user's character set. For example, from Chinese to Russian, etc.

What are the different address validation tools?

There are essentially three different ways to validate address data, and which one you use depends on when you want to validate the data as it comes into your database.

• International Address Autocomplete API - Validate the address as it is typed programmatically
• International Address Validation - This is when you run the entered address after it is entered
• Bulk International Address Validation - Primarily used to clean up address databases, bulk validation runs millions or billions of addresses at once.
• International Address Validation API - Incorporate address validation into your website or application directly.

What is the secret to success in setup?

Try it with a test list directly on our website. After that, you can purchase a number of lookups, and integrate it with your software using our API. We have multiple libraries (SDKs) available to help, along with very clear documentation on our website.

And don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you need any help at any part of the process.

Regular office hours: Weekdays 8 AM - 5 PM Mountain Time.

Phone: 801-877-5778

Chat: Anywhere on smarty.com

Email: support@smarty.com

Watch the full webinar recording for more information!

Full webinar recording