To help merchants combat checkout bots, Boxify offers its users a way to configure a string that must be matched by the customer on the second shipping-address line during checkout.

Configuring this simple bot-protection measure is easy to do:

STEP 1: Visit the Boxify dashboard, click on the button marked, "Adjust preferences" and use the bot-protection drop-down list to select the special characters that you want to require customers to enter on the second shipping-address line at checkout.

STEP 2: Click on "Settings" at the left in your Shopify store admin, and choose "Checkout." Make sure that "Address line 2" in the "Customer information panel" is set to "Optional."

STEP 3: In this same section of your store admin ("Settings">"Checkout"), scroll down to the "Checkout language" panel and click on the button marked, "Edit checkout content."

(The following modifications should work for most shops, although your shop theme might be configured differently and require other adjustments.)

While on the "Checkout & system" tab, use the filter tool at the top to find the field marked, "Optional address2 label" in the "Checkout contact" section. Enter here a prompt for the special characters that you are requiring customers to enter with this bot-protection feature. For example, if you chose to use three periods as the string to match in STEP 1, set the prompt here to something like: "Prove you're human by entering 3 periods." If you want, you could add: "(Apt. # can go above.)"

STEP 4: While on that same screen, use the filter tool at the top to search on the words "Review your address" to find the "Checkout shipping errors shipping method not available generic" section.

In the "One" field of this section, enter a prompt like: "Be sure to enter three periods above to prove that you are human."

By setting the "Optional address2 label" in this way, customers going to your checkout page will see something like this prompting them to enter the special characters needed to view shipping rates from Boxify.

Don't delay in making these changes in Shopify, because after you carry out STEP 1, Boxify will ignore requests for shipping rates it receives for your store if the second shipping-address line doesn't contain the special bot-prevention string that you had set in your Boxify preferences. This includes requests that Shopify sends to Boxify for draft orders. So when preparing a draft order, as a final step when you are ready to apply a shipping rate from Boxify, set your bot-protection string (and nothing else) on the second shipping-address line. If you need to add an apartment or suite, include that on the first shipping-address line.

Boxify offers various options for a bot-prevention string using periods, equal signs, and underscore characters. You are, of course, free to edit out these characters from the second shipping-address line on your orders in your store admin if you find these characters obtrusive. Because Shopify doesn't allow the billing address on an order to be edited, Boxify doesn't allow more complicated bot-preventions strings, such as one containing numbers, which might interfere with credit-card validation that uses the billing address.

Note that Boxify does not apply its bot-protection test to requests for shipping rates that don't have a city specified in the shipping address. This ensures that Boxify will process requests from in-cart shipping calculators (for which street addresses and city names are not provided), even though they lack the bot-protection string in address2.