Everyone understands the necessity of a shipping address. Their purchases have to be sent somewhere after all. The billing address is used to validate the credit card and determine fees like sales tax. However, not every customer knows this so requesting the billing address can be a little confounding to them.

Users hate typing and they hate it more if they have to type the same thing twice. Since a vast majority of customers order products to be shipped to their own addresses anyway, asking them to enter their billing addresses is just an annoyance because it results in duplicate typing.

Since the shipping address is often similar to the billing address (unless someone recently moved house or is buying a gift), avoid asking your customers to type it. In addition to being annoying, it might lead to unnecessary errors and confusion.

Have a pre-checked checkbox

You should have a checkbox that sets the billing address to the same value as the shipping address (shipping address = billing address). The checkbox should ideally be pre-checked if yours is a B2C business.

When not to pre-check the checkbox

If you run a B2B store, don’t precheck the “shipping address = billing address” checkbox since a business owner might have their credit card registered to their residential address rather than the business one.

Gift-centric businesses should also not precheck the “shipping address = billing address” checkbox because a good number of customers might want the gift delivered straight to a recipient whose shipping address is different from their own. Flowers and greeting cards are good examples of products people rarely buy for themselves.