Last week I introduced you to the on-line donation page at themillenniumfoundation.org.au. One of the key features of this page is the validation of data as it is entered.

So many websites I see have poor validation of customer details. Of course if the details are entered lazily or incorrectly by the customer, they are going to be wrong. This means returned mail, low postal barcoding rates and more importantly, the possibility of losing the customer that you thought you just gained.

DMS has done a lot of research in this area over the last couple of years. One of the key things that we have done is building in our POSTman application support to our client’s sites.

For those of you not familiar with it, POSTman is an AMAS certified application that incorporates a database from Australia Post of all deliverable addresses in Australia. It can be used to validate address data and detects when customers have made a misspelling or got the postcode/suburb incorrect, or even just entered a completely bogus address!

POSTman automatically corrects minor errors or assist the client by taking them to a list of “near matches”. Websites are notorious for the poor quality of data that they produce and POSTman has been a great solution for many of our clients including the likes of Vodafone.

But here’s the exciting part; we are now introducing an even easier way to add this capability to your website. DMS are now offering the POSTman application as an online web service that you can subscribe to for as little as $49.95 per month. We’ll even give you example source code to show you how to build this address validation into your website.

Offering POSTman address validation via a web service means that customers can get up and running very quickly with no need to install any software, no need to apply the quarterly updates from Australia Post and no need to worry about security issues or where to publish the POSTman web application.

If you would like to know more about the POSTman Web Service, please give Andrew a call on (07) 3510 9555 or e-mail him at a.douglas@dmsw.com.au