Doctor Jock
Addresses
Non-Mainland
Delivery Pains
Don't want to deliver off the mainland?
Laura Lutener
For e-commerce businesses in the UK and the USA, non-contiguous /non-mainland deliveries can be costly as well as a real admin pain.
In the UK for example, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland all have UK Postcodes and the Royal Mail charges standard postage prices for them all. However, if you use a courier other than Royal Mail for your business, these areas can be prohibitively expensive to ship to. This can lead to difficulties for retailers, either having to contact customers post-checkout to ask for a higher shipping fee, or else to make a loss on the delivery in order to keep the customer.
The same is true for USA-based businesses and the non-contiguous states and territories.
Luckily, Doctor Jock is here with just the cure!
The latest update to our international address finder, the Address Auto-Complete API, allows you to stop customers from entering addresses off the mainland in the UK and the USA at checkout.
At the time of writing, the following area exclusions are available:
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
gbr_northern_ireland | Excludes Northern Ireland from UK searches. |
gbr_isle_of_man | Excludes Isle of Man from UK searches. |
gbr_isle_of_wight | Excludes Isle of Wight from UK searches. |
gbr_channel_islands | Excludes Channel Islands from UK searches. |
gbr_all_except_northern_ireland | Excludes all areas except Northern Ireland from UK searches. Only addresses in Northern Ireland will be returned. |
usa_non_contiguous | Excludes areas of the US that are not part of the 48 adjoining states: Alaska, American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands. |
usa_insular_areas | Excludes any US area that is not a state or federal district: American Samoa, Guam, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands |
usa_armed_forces | This will exclude all Armed Forces Americas; Armed Forces Europe, Middle East, and Canada; and Armed Forces Pacific addresses. |
These area exclusions are available on our BigCommerce, Magento 2, PrestaShop and our Shopify Plus plugins, plus our JS Library and JSON API. Get in touch with our team at support@fetchify.com for more information and assistance with other platforms.
Adding area exclusions to our address autocomplete tool is free and activating it couldn’t be simpler. Make sure you are running the latest version of our integration and then it’s just a question of clicking the checkbox in your settings and you’re good to go. Further information is available in our tutorials and documentation and our support team are always happy to help with any questions you may have.
About Fetchify
We are a pioneer in SaaS address lookup and data validation solutions. We process millions of data transactions each day for thousands of clients ranging from small e-commerce startups to large household brands such as Heinz and RBS. Our flagship products Address Auto-Complete and Postcode Lookup reduce friction on checkouts, leading to increases in conversion rate of up to 40%, and helps reduce failed deliveries by as much as 75%. Since launching in 2008, we have differentiated by our ease of integration and exceptional support.
