A recent study from Melissa Data titled “How to Capture Clean Data on Web Forms: 1-2-3 Creating a Data Quality Firewall” is a good, in-depth look at the subject. Excerpts of the main points from the paper:

More than 25 percent of data quality problems are caused by data entry errors by customers, which is one of the contributing factors to poor data quality – costing U.S. businesses more than $600 billion each year, according to The Data Warehousing Institute.

Another source of frustration is falsified or fraudulent information. Some visitors are privacy-conscious; they input false information on Web forms to protect their privacy.

But other visitors are interested in committing e-commerce fraud, which involves stolen credit card information or identity theft. And it costs merchants big -- an estimated $3.3 billion in 2009, according to CyberSource (News - Alert), a risk management firm.

Verify your data. Verifying your data is the most important, cost-effective step to achieving an accurate Web form submission. It can help you reduce undeliverable or delayed shipments, wasted postage and labor, and avoid the cost of calling wrong phone numbers. The end result is a cleaner, more accu- rate database of new customers and prospects – one that will fuel better response rates, enhance customer database analysis, improve customer satisfaction, and ensure more efficient delivery of your company’s products and services.

Match your data. An estimated 10 percent of names and addresses in an average CRM or order management system are duplicate records. This leads to inefficient marketing efforts, wasted postage, paper and an inaccurate view of your customers. Detecting duplicate data and merge/purging them to achieve a unified view of a customer, gives you a better window into a customer’s buying habits, brand interactions, transaction history, and household relationships – all of which will significantly improve your company’s data-driven marketing campaigns and product positioning.

Locate your visitors. Many shoppers enjoy the convenience of going online to research a product or service, look for the nearest store location, or search for a coupon – even before they actually make the purchase at the physical store. This is when utilizing geolocation technology can be advantageous for your company. A geolocation tool can capture your shopper’s personal data, and other information for use in marketing efforts targeting that shopper’s particular interests.