Address autocompletion in checkout for South African addresses

[lesterdefreitas]

Fully aware of the documentation that does not list South Africa as a country supported by address autocompletion at checkout. However, there is something suspicious going on here that we have been trying to get to the bottom of since 2022.

Address autocompletion for merchants selling to customers in South Africa was one of those features that we were always waiting for. We had to field numerous client requests about it and explain that it was potentially coming, but we didn’t know when.

Then, suddenly, without any warning, it started working in 2022! Here is a screenshot of a real Shopify checkout where it is able to serve up address completion suggestions using Google Autocomplete for South African street addresses:

Naturally our clients were very happy and started to rely on the benefits of this feature. But then, at some point (we’re not sure exactly when) and without any warning or updates to any changelogs, it stopped working.

We reached out to Shopify multiple times and, finally, after jumping through all of the hoops etc. we were given an explanation, and I quote:

“You mentioned that it used to work before and then it stopped, did I understand this correctly? This could have been because address autocomplete for addresses in select countries had previously been fulfilled by Google, but it is now powered by Shopify”

We bought this explanation as it seemed to make sense, although naturally we were annoyed that Shopify would make this change when it would negatively impact all of the merchants selling in South Africa. In any case, we left it at that for a while until we noticed a few things…

1. When creating draft orders in the back end Google is still used for address auto completion, and it works with South African addresses.

2. Even more interesting, when testing stores that sell in countries where address autocompletion is supported, Google is still the engine powering the functionality, not Shopify, as we were told!

So this has led us right round, full circle, back to the same question: Why did address autocompletion for SA addresses work briefly for a time in 2022 and then stop?

I’m posting this here because everytime we open up a support case with Shopify about this issue, (1) it takes about a week to get the point across and then (2) they stop replying and eventually our messages bounce back because they have closed the ticket on their side.

Does anyone have any insights into this?

[CrossoverOnline]

Hi there,

Has there been any solution to this?

[lesterdefreitas]

Sadly, still no. But I’m doing my monthly follow up with Shopify on this issue today, so I’ll post here if there is anything new.

[IVJ]

Hi Lester

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation on the problem in terms of Google Autocomplete for Shopify. I have reached out to the help desk to inquire as to a timeline for this to work in Shopify and I get no clear indication from them as to a specific date. I find the help and assistance in a country other than the US almost non existent.

[Arron_G]

Hi there,

The address autocompletion at checkout page also not supported in Malaysia. But when creating draft orders in the back end, the address auto completion is working fine. I also found out that there’s one Malaysia store is using this autocomplete feature on their checkout page, and it works perfectly and powered by google. Not sure how they did it.

Do you have any new insights for this?

[Shay]

Hey folks, thank you for sharing your feedback about this and I definitely understand how important it is to get some clear information about this feature and when/how it is available for your business. To clarify, yes, Shopify is replacing address auto-complete with our own database of address suggestions. This is not fully rolled out so you would still see a combination of google address autocomplete suggestions and suggestions from the Shopify database at the same time.

The first thing I would ask is to check in your store admin under Settings > Checkout > Address Collection Information to see if you have the option to enable address auto-complete during checkout. More info: Shopify Help Center - Address Collection Information.

If you DO NOT have autocomplete available on your checkout, but you are seeing it in your draft orders, please let me know. If you are able to provide a screenshot example of the autocomplete prompt in your draft orders (please mask any sensitive customer data) that would be very helpful for me.

[Arron_G]

Hi Shay,

Thanks for your reply! Attached herewith the —

Autocompletion Setting:

Back-end Draft Order (showing the autocomplete):

Checkout Page (autocomplete is not showing):

[Ollie]

Hey @Arron_G .

Thanks for the quick response on this thread and providing those screenshots.

I can certainly see how this can affect the checkout processes for your customers. I can bring this to the attention of our developers as a suggestion to look into. With that being said, we appreciate you taking the time to bring this to our attention as feedback like this is how we can build a better platform for all merchants on Shopify.

Let us know if you have any questions.

[lesterdefreitas]

Hi @Ollie ,

We have been ‘bringing this to your attention’ since early 2023 and still nothing has been done. Not very encouraging from our perspective, sorry to say!

I currently have an ongoing support ticket (#3889635) with Shopify since September last year and still no change.

Why is this taking so long?

[AbubakrSaban]

Hi, I was just wondering if you had any feedback from Shopify on this issue?

[lesterdefreitas]

Unfortunately nothing helpful. But thanks for the reminder, I haven’t followed up on this issue again just recently, and we really all should do that as often as possible to put pressure on Shopify to restore this much-needed feature.

[Shaun1985]

Still no solution to this, why are we paying the same rates without all the features, we have 5 shopify stores and considering move to shopify plus but if this is not resolved in the next few months we are going to consider Wix or another provider that is more helpful

[Shaun1985]

Please anyone struggling with this issue reply to this thread so we can gather contact info and look at solutions like moving to a provider that takes less than a few years to provide something that we are paying for but not receiving or to compel shopify to provide the service or allow a third party to provide it at checkout without having to use shopify plus

[amosmos]

Hey,

You can now use an app like CompleteIt (https://apps.shopify.com/checkout-autocomplete)) to achieve Google address autocomplete in the checkout in countries where Shopify autocomplete isn’t available.

You will need a Google Maps Geocoding API key and that’s it.

Hope it helps,

Amos

[lesterdefreitas]

And a $2300/month Shopify Plus subscription though, right?

[AbubakrSaban]

This should be such and easy thing to fix, the frustration is that not only does auto completion work in the admin, but it also works for customers using new “customer account” when adding an address

[amosmos]

Yes, Shopify only allow such apps on the Plus plan.

[lesterdefreitas]

Absolutely! And yet the most important place for this to work is the checkout. I really believe there is some blindspot there on Shopify’s part and our feedback is not getting through to the developers that need to hear it.

[lesterdefreitas]

Time to awaken this beast again. We still are not seeing address validation for South African addresses in the shipping address fields in checkout.

However, has have been pointed out in this thread already, there are other places that address autocomplete does work, even for South African addresses. In each case below please take note of the important fact that Google is still used to power such suggestions, debunking Shopify’s excuse that the outage is due to a change to a new Shopify-based address validation system:

1. In the admin:

1a. When managing customer addresses:

1b. When managing location addresses:

1c. When entering the business billing address:

2. On the front end:

2a. In customer accounts when managing addresses:

Curiously, this one does not show as being powered by Google specifically.

2b. In checkout when selecting pick-up in store:

This is the most painful of all. Why would you have the feature when selecting pick-up, when your address is not even important, but not for shipping when address accuracy is critical? And, just to really add salt to the wound, they even have a nifty “Use my location” feature for pulling in your location for you when selecting pick-up!

But yet, we still don’t have it in the most important place…

When filling in address for shipping at checkout, we get to autocomplete or validation:

---

@Liam or someone at Shopify, please oh please can this be addressed? We’ve been waiting years for this and it is so painful that this feature is everywhere except the one place it is so desperately needed.

Any excuses about a rollout of availability or change of database surely fall flat in the face of the evidence presented above where Google is still actively being used to autocomplete addresses in all other locations.

It is our honest opinion that there is some data string somewhere for address autocompletion in the shipping field on the Shopify checkout where some dev just needs to add ZAR (and other countries) in to enable this feature for addresses from that/those country(ies).

How hard can it be, really?

[lesterdefreitas]

@Liam please can we get some attention on this issue. This is is such a simple issue and it could cost us a Shopify Plus potential lead.