You’ve probably seen them in hundreds of places. They look like little boxes with smaller black and white boxes, dots and strange designs inside. Welcome to the 21st century. These are called QR Codes, and they’re the latest version of barcodes. Most printing services around Carrollton can help you make them. Or, if you’re doing your printing in Carrollton, you may still need to do a little research. Here’s a basic rundown of what they are.
Where QR Codes Come From
QR codes were originally invented in Japan, and have been in use for over a decade. A subsidiary of Toyota owns the trademark to them, but they’ve encouraged the widespread use of QR codes. Although they seem to be somewhat of a novelty here in the States, there are apps and programs that can read QR codes all over the world.
Why Use QR Codes?
Everyone who carries out commerce is familiar with a barcode. It’s the little jumble of lines that tells a laser scanner a product number. It then comes up in a system as having been sold, and is removed from the store’s electronic inventory. A QR code is similar, but where a regular barcode is a one- dimensional code containing 20 numerical digits, a QR code is a two-dimensional matrix that can hold thousands of alphanumeric characters.
But what’s the point? Do we really need QR codes to live our lives? Barcodes have worked well for a long time. That’s true to some extent, but a QR code is a way you can connect with people on a much more constant level. Beyond its obvious utility as a way to keep track of your inventory and sales, QR codes can help you with lead generation, networking and much more.
Taking Advantage of QR Codes
The uses of QR codes is limited only to your imagination. However, there are a few uses that are more common than others. For example, using them for SEO and analytics. Imagine you run a small business on the Internet. You use a QR code in a public place and link it to your homepage. A QR code can link through a gateway so you can track how many people visit your site through the code. Depending on the gateway site you use, you can also track the time of day and locations where people scanned your code. As a practical use tool, you can also use codes to let customers link directly to a specific part of your site. If you run a restaurant, you might put a code linking to a customer satisfaction survey on the door as people leave. You could put it in a public place and give people some sort of free download for scanning the code. Coupons, directions, advertisements, questions, feedback…the real question is this: why wouldn’t you use QR codes? If people can do something you want them to by just scanning a code, they’re going to be more likely to do it for you.
QR codes are something still relatively new. It might be a good idea to do a little research on the Internet, then ask someone at a professional printing company what a good QR builder is. If you do your homework, taking your QR code in for printing will be a piece of cake. Then all you need to do is to put up the codes and keep an eye on the web traffic.