And that’s a good thing for QR Codes in general, let’s hope the technology will get used in more innovative ways than just sending people to bad advertising.
I’m predicting more quality, less quantity in QR Code based campaigns.
Last week I was at Barcamp Brugge, “The web links into the world” edition at Westtoer where I did a presentation on the state of the QR Code. Read my summary after the jump.
There is no exponential worldwide growth of interest in QR Code technology today like there was a year ago. In many countries the trend is still going strong, and in others the level on interest in QR Codes has leveled but not decreased.
Do campaigns where people are more likely have money and a smartphone. My research based on some personal tracking, Google Trends and Google Insights queries indicates that QR Code interest is going strong in Europe in urban areas, there’s a clear difference between metropolitan areas and rural areas.
Don’t target students with a QR Code campagin however, they go to colleges in big cities and may seem to be a good match but they are not. Certainly not a good target group in Belgium or countries where a mobile data plan costs you an arm and a leg.
Several online surveys, reports and studies confirm that QR Codes are far better known than they used to be. Have a look at the presentation for links to my resources and excerpts I chose to highlight.
QR Codes can be very powerful tool in helping you identify your fans, be nice to the scanner, give something back for the time they invested in scanning your code. If you don’t you may lose them.
Here are some bits of adivce:
give at least something practical to the scanner
make it a Fun User Experience
give incentives (coupons, secrets, sweepstakes, …)
The “scan for boobs” slide illustrates a simple incentive quite effectively.
Thank you Westtoer for the fine venue and the smooth organization!
If you’re planning to do a QR Code campaign and want some advice, don’t hesitate to drop me a line on Twitter (@bertheymans) or at Bert @ this domain.
At last a good QR Code campaign, everyone can relate to. I’ll let the video speak for itself.
Get a customized sticker at the Heiniken booth on a festival, stick it anywhere you want on yourself, get scanned and meet new people. You don’t even need to access internet with your phone for this to work by the way, that’s an additional bonus as you’ll reach a whole lot more people.
I come across QR Codes in print advertising often that are based on Bitly (aka bit.ly) links. And I made a quite scruffy little video of how I scanned the QR Codes in a Red Market print ad, the QR Codes have Bitly links encoded.
In this post I’ll explain how you and I can look at the scanning stats of a QR Code generated by a third party that’s encoded with a Bitly URL. The video just shows me scanning the ad and shaking the camera way too much
As a service Bitly will provide a QR Code based on the short link you generated. The resulting image is always the same size, easy to fit in a print layout.
If I need to recommend how to create a QR Code for print I always suggest getting one in .eps format with this QR Code generator, but that’s for another post.
Every Bitly link has tracking built in so QR Codes based on these short URLs have tracking too.
Now every bitly link get’s tracked and there’s a really easy trick to see the scanning and click through stats and that’s by adding a plus sign “+” at the end of the regular link like so:
If you where wondering, you can read an encoded link from your smartphone after scanning the QR Code.
As you may notice we can see that the Facebook QR Code got scanned more than the Twitter QR Code, they created the Facebook QR code about a month earlier but over the last 30 days the Twitter QR Code in the ad got less scans. They clearly did some other kind of campaign in May to generate traffic on their Facebook page.
It is my personal opinion that this use of QR Codes in prints ads is a good thing, linking to your social profiles this way shows you’re thinking with mobile visitors in mind.
By itself this is nothing more than a real world internet link and will not generate much traffic, but using QR Codes is in line with the Red Market “self-scanning your groceries, look how fast and modern” message so I guess it makes sense. But it’s still just a link, alas there’s no other incentive for scanning. The sites a scanner end up on (Facebook, Twitter) are well optimized for mobile visitors so that’s a plus.
They do miss an accessibility opportunity in their print ad by not putting user friendly URLs next to the QR Codes. You should always provide an alternative to scanning.
If you’re still reading and don’t know what the actual purpose for the existence of something lik Bitly is, here’s my totally arbitrary explanation … Bitly is a URL shortener, you give it a long weblink and it makes a short URL for you that does a HTTP 301 redirect, which means it sends you to that original link when clicked or tapped. A short URL is easy to type on a mobile device and it will fit easily in short messages (think Twitter).
Hope you enjoyed this read, I’ve been out of the picture here for way to long due to a drop-dead private workload but my promise of making a QR Code business card tutorial still holds true.
This is what I call a great way to get your QR Codes scanned, give people something to enjoy immediately when they have a use for it. The beauty of this campaign is the immediate incentive to scan.
In November 2010, US based FirstBank installed a number of signs at Denver International Airport with integrated QR codes. The general public were invited to take a photo of the codes with their smartphones, after which free goodies (such as ebooks, crosswords and sudoku puzzles) would be unlocked. There are 12 different ebooks available for download and FirstBank estimates that 7,000 books and puzzles will be downloaded throughout the five-month campaign.
It’s like the QR Code resume or that creepy QR Code project that makes the dead talk but with a tattoo. Now who’ll be the first to do NFC implants to do something similar, that could get you some extra followers on Twitter now wouldn’t it.
As you can see, when the tattoo is scanned the phone loads a Youtube video that animates the tattoo when the phone is properly aligned. This looks simpler that it actually is as there’s some careful scaling and measuring work that needs to be done in order to do this properly.
If you want to make your own and could use some advice? Be sure to check out my presentation on QR Code Mashups. Get them printed at moo.com just like I did. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
The small QR Code on the back is a link to jumpscan.com/heymans a mobile profile website that looks good on a mobile phone. You can find a bunch of personal info about me there and you can download a vCard (v3.0) too.
The big QR Code is a v2.0 vCard; it contains all my essential contact information but doesn’t include a picture nor my online resources but it works without an internet connection, very handy for people who don’t have a data plan yet.
For those of you who are curious, that pixel guy was created by Very Important Pixels and I ordered the regular business card size with a business card holder at moo.com using their custom design upload tool.
Stay tuned, I’m working on business card Photoshop templates specifically for QR Code business cards and a tutorial on how to customize them. If you don’t want to miss out on those you should subscribe to the newsletter.
