Improving Data Quality With Address and Telephone Number Validation in Drupal
Addresses and telephone numbers are fundamental identifiers, its important that they are accurate if you're collecting them on your website or app. Whether it's for shipping, customer communication, or marketing purposes, having correct and validated address and telephone number information is paramount. Fortunately, for Drupal websites and apps, there are modules that streamline the process of validating this vital information, thereby enhancing data integrity and improving user experience.
Understanding the Importance of Validation
Before delving into the modules available for Drupal, it's essential to grasp why validation of addresses and telephone numbers is indispensable for businesses, and why it isnt a good idea to just collect this data using plain old text fields where a user can enter anything they like.
Data Accuracy: Validating addresses and telephone numbers ensures that the information collected is accurate and up-to-date. This reduces the likelihood of errors in communication or shipping, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction.
Cost Efficiency: Incorrect addresses and phone numbers can lead to wasted resources, such as undelivered shipments or failed communication attempts. By validating this information upfront, businesses can avoid unnecessary expenses.
Compliance: In certain industries, compliance requirements mandate the use of validated addresses and telephone numbers. Ensuring compliance not only mitigates legal risks but also fosters trust with customers.
Drupal Modules for Address and Telephone Number Validation
Drupal, being a versatile and robust content management system, offers modules that facilitate the validation of addresses and telephone numbers.
Address Module: The Address module provides a field type for storing addresses which standardises storage and provides validation functionalities. It leverages a well maintained library of address structures and formats for every country for validation, ensuring accuracy and consistency in address data. The address field dynamically changes when the country is changed, displaying or hiding parts of the address structre which are relevant to that country, ensuring that the user must supply a fully complete adress in the correct format.
Telephone Validation Module: This modules enhances Drupal core telephone number fields by providing validation options. It supports various formats and allows administrators to enforce specific formats for telephone numbers, thereby ensuring consistency across the platform. If a user enters a phone number which is not in the correct format for their country they will receive an error. Telephone Validation uses the libphonenumber composer package for validation, and supports the many different national number formats.
Loqate Module: The Loqate module, formerly known as the PCA module, is a robust solution for address verification and geocoding and fully integrates with the Address module. It perfoms address and postcode lookups using Loqate's extensive address verification database, enabling a user to choose their address instead of typing it in - avoiding any possibility of providing inaccurate address data.
Benefits for Your Business
Implementing address and telephone number validation in Drupal can yield numerous benefits for businesses:
Improved Customer Experience: By ensuring that addresses and telephone numbers are accurate, businesses can deliver a seamless and hassle-free experience to customers. Reduced errors in communication and shipping lead to higher satisfaction levels.
Operational Efficiency: Validated addresses and telephone numbers minimise operational inefficiencies stemming from incorrect data. Businesses can streamline logistics, reduce returns, and optimise resource allocation, resulting in cost savings and improved productivity.
Data Quality: Validated data translates to higher data quality, which is invaluable for analytics, reporting, and decision-making processes. Accurate data enables businesses to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and demographics with confidence.
Enhanced Reputation: Consistently providing accurate contact information instills trust and credibility in the eyes of customers. It portrays professionalism and attention to detail, fostering long-term relationships and positive word-of-mouth referrals.
In conclusion, the validation of addresses and telephone numbers is a crucial aspect of data management for businesses operating on the Drupal platform. By leveraging these modules businesses can ensure data accuracy. If you would like to dicuss how we can help your organisation with data validation, get in touch.
