Make your Paper Marketing Digital with QR Codes

You’ve all seen QR Code now, be it on real estate signs or via the Covid Scanning App, but do you know what they are? In this short article I’ll be looking at the origin of QR Codes, the difference between them and barcodes, what they can do, and how you can use them in your business.

A quick introduction

Quick Response Code (QR Code) was created by the Japanese automotive company Denso Wave to track parts in an easy machine readable form on automotive production lines. The grid design was used as it allows a machine to read it in any orientation, which traditional barcodes have an issue with. One of the more interesting features of it is that it’s not a fixed design, limited to a number of characters or digits but allows for a flexible sizing to meet the type and amount content stored within it. Denso Wave has not locked the system to a proprietary standard, which requires payment of licensing fees, leading to the format being quickly adopted world wide for the storage of digital information in a printed format. Denso Wave does own several key patents to it but has chosen not to enforce or has waved some of them to ensure that the technology becomes widespread. 

Being open to anyone to use means that there were many updates and changes to allow for new types of content to be stored in new and interesting ways. It also allows for basic tracking of how it’s being used depending how the code contents were setup during creation. What makes it more useful, apart from it being basically free to use, is that it has a much higher error correction rate, so if part of it is damaged it’s still readable.  This has led to the format having some fun additions to the design that allow to really personalise the code in memermable ways which we will talk about later. Both creating and reading a QR Code is extremely quick and simple these days, with most people having access to a reader via a phone app, and websites like our own having QR Code generators. We will cover creating one in a later section.

What types of QR Codes are there?

Because of its flexibility there is a wide range of ways that you can use a QR Code. However most fall into the following basic types.  

• Basic Text or Numbers
  What it was originally created for. Just a string of numbers or letters.
• URL Address
  This URL address allows you to link to a site, individual page on the website, file stored on a website, or even execute code on the webpage.
• Email Address
  Same as using a url but can include a subject line and message text too.
• Phone Number
  When scanned a phone will automatically switch to call mode with the number already entered so the person just needs to hit pickup.
• SMS Message
  Same as doing an email, letting you preload a message to be sent to the phone number
• VCard or MECard
  Load your contact information directly into a client’s phone. Great for things like business cards
• Calendar Events
  Load an event into people’s calendars to save on typing
• Geographical Location
  Not only give people a street address but the latitude & longitude as well
• Wifi Login
  Make it easy for customer to log in to your business’s wifi with all the information needed to log in in one small scannable graphic

Now you will see sites talk about also generating social media links, accessing things like music and videos, coupon codes, use paypal, even bitcoin. The reality is that they are just using url links or plain text so you can do it too without the need of an expensive expert.

Beyond the standard QR Code ranges there are such things as Secure QR Codes which encryption codes to ensure that only authorised systems can translate the data. Frame QR allows for the use of colour graphics within the code to allow you to personalise the code by giving it a human understandable component. There are even variations that use different coloured dots to encode even more data within the QR grid, but these systems are not widely used and fall outside the scope of this article. 

Difference between a QR Code and a Bar Code

There are several differences between a QR Codes and a Bar Codes. Most barcodes you see are on product packaging so they are one of the various UPC or EAN codes, where a central authority controls the distribution of these numbers. You have to pay a licence fee for one or more of these codes which then belong to you and no one else can use it. You have no control over the number itself; you are just issued the next available number or numbers. There are many different variations of the code depending on the region of the world the product is registered in. Barcodes are more restricted in the content they can carry, mostly a string of numbers though there is a version that carries text too. (We have open sourced versions of those barcodes available as fonts in our online studio software.) They also aren’t as damage resistant as QR codes since they were designed for much more limited technology of the 1970’s so didn’t want to tax the systems with complex error checking.

Why use QR Codes

To make your printed material digital. QR Codes are great for situations where you want people to jump to a unique web page or post on a social media site. Just put in that url in the generator and paste the graphic in a flyer. We’ve always said that your business card is your first bit of marketing so why not use it to make it easy for people to add you to their phone contact list, which in this day of cloud based systems like automatically add you to their email address book too. For the average consumer, most will never type out some long web address just to see some marketing material or promotion, especially if it’s on their phoneIf you are like me, I get put off filling in some long web address on my phone just to be able to access some webpage; but a QR Code that’s a single app click and a snap away, they are more likely to given how use to it everyone is now.

How to create a QR Code

If you use our online design studio software, we have QR Code creation built right in as part of the toolset. Hit the ‘Image’ button, ‘import an image’, select ‘QR Code’, then add a ‘QR Code’ and choose the type and fill in the blanks. Now we admit it’s basic because we don’t want to overwhelm you with all the options out there.

There are several online sites that let you generate most of the common formats of QR Codes for free and download a graphic for you to use. (We’ll link a couple of places at the end of this article.) From there you can start getting into the more interesting options for QR Codes, such as gradient coloured dots, graphics inside of them or embedding the QR Code inside an image although not all scanning apps can read them. Also with some careful coding you can make the code change where it directs the person too based on data pulled from their phone such as date, time, and location but that again falls outside the scope of this article as we’re getting into the weeds of dynamic website content generation.

What to avoid with QR Codes

Because QR Codes are so flexible and easy to create and use, it can lead to situations where they fail due to a lack of understanding of QR Codes limitations. So here’s a few things to know before attempting to create your own.

• Do not make the image too small for what it contains
  Because you can put a huge amount of information in a QR code it dynamically resizes based on how much it has to contain (from 10 to 1800 characters), meaning that there is no standard ‘size’ for it. I’ve seen several cases where someone wants to save space so shrinks it down and in the process blends the dots of data together rendering it useless. As long as you can see the individual dots on the code at its printed size, then a person’s phone/tablet camera will be able to see it.
• Don’t get too colourful or fancy with your design
  Because of the error checking built into the system, this allows people to play around with colours of the dots and allows for images to be embedded within them. The downside is that the more fancy you get with it, the more error checking data needed to allow for it which makes for a larger QR Code which is taking up space on your marketing. If choosing between a smaller QR Code or getting fancy with the design, choose the smaller code as you will be letting the rest of the marketing do the work of selling.
• Inverted and embedded QR Codes aren’t as compatible
  Not all QR & Barcode apps are created equal. Some are designed to only see the official standard for the codes, black grid of dots on a white background with a white border frame. While you can get away with different colours or even gradient colours for the grid of dots, the solid single contrasting background colour frame allows these apps to work.
• Don’t forget information in text form
  Not everyone has phones able to use barcode scanning apps, or even have one installed on it. A lot of people won’t scan a QR Code without knowing what it is for because of security issues. (While I’ve not seen any cases of QR Codes used for illegal acts like taking people to web pages designed to install spyware, it doesn’t mean they can’t be used for such.) Most scanner apps will list the type data it’s read and asks if the person wants to use it before acting on it, so putting information about what the code is in text will dispel any concerns about the QR Code.
• Always test it yourself
  Sounds silly to say this but mistakes can happen. If you make a mistake in the information you put in when creating the QR Code then it’s gonna be there when you use it. The error checking is there to make sure the information is read by the app correctly, not if the information is valid. Test, test, and test again before you use the code. It cost you nothing to create it, so there’s no extra cost if you have to do it again.

Where to go from here

QR Codes are practically free and easy to create. They allow for creativity and connection of physical marketing to the digital version. You can create a few general purpose ones to always have available, and have unique ones for special marketing purposes. Keep them on file and drop them in where and when you want to help people jump from your physical to your digital marketing. Use our online design studio software tools to add them in when you create marketing or have us help you by creating unique ones for your needs. Copy Express is here to help you get your business out there every way you can.

Links

• Wikipedia article on QR Codes – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code
• Online Basic QR Code Generator – https://goqr.me/
• Advanced QR Code Generator – https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/