By MARK RIFFEY, for the Flathead Beacon.
You may have seen those odd-looking square bar codes in newspapers and magazines, on product boxes, etc.
You might have even noticed them in the middle of the star-shaped signage in some Macy’s television commercials.
They’re called “QR codes.”
So, what are QR codes and why should business owners care about them?
A smartphone can scan/read a QR code, which will take it to a specific website address (URL).
Why use QR codes at all? Who really cares about these odd square bar codes?
Your prospects and customers do. Some of your websites make it really hard to buy.
For prospects and customers using smartphones, it can be particularly annoying. But your customers don’t use smartphones, right?
Let’s talk about that. Currently, Nielsen (yes, those TV ratings people count other things too) says 40 percent of U.S. cell phone users use a smartphone.
A web search will tell you that there are 327 million active mobile subscriptions in the U.S. Yes, that’s more mobile subscriptions than there are adults, per the 2010 census. The numbers get a little whacked partly because of the number of people with a personal account cell phone and a business one (provided to them or otherwise).
Yes, 327 million is a fairly big number. Too big, maybe. To get a better handle on the numbers, a glance at a 2009 CTIA (wireless telecom industry group) survey of its members indicated that 257 million Americans have data-capable devices and about half of those are phones. The rest are laptops and tablets. So we’ve reduced the number to roughly half the population, which is close to the Nielsen number.
Again, that’s an end-of-2009 number….BEFORE the availability of iPhone4 (and 4S), iPad and other modern-ish tablets.
Seems to me a number that’s even 10 million smartphones too big would be enough to provoke interest in the experience mobile/smartphone website users have at your site.
So now that you have big, scary (or exciting) numbers to think about – particularly if your business deals in retail, tourism and other core business-to-consumer fields – get back to solving the “we make it hard to buy” problem.
Important safety tip about using QR codes
Never (yes, never) use your home page URL as the destination.
Reason #1 – QR code users are, by definition, mobile users. Presumably you have a URL that is designed to be used by mobile browser users so they don’t spend all of their time squinting, pinching and spreading (or pressing zoom buttons) to read about your cool new product. If your site automatically senses mobile browsers and changes behavior or reroutes them to pages designed for mobile users, all the better.
Reason #2 – Sending them directly to your home page can make it far more difficult to measure inbound visitor numbers.
Why is that important? Because you want to know how your QR code links are performing by media/by ad/by publication, etc. If you have them going to different URLs (web site addresses) such as MyReallyCoolsite.com/QR1 and MyReallycoolsite.com/QR2, then you can figure out their individual performance.
If QR code A works better than QR code B, you have information about the effectiveness of the media, placement and other characteristics of the location of that code. You can eliminate this reason by including QR code specific analytics codes (Google Analytics, et al) in your URLs, but that doesn’t eliminate the most important reason…
Reason #3 – Why did they scan (and hopefully share) that QR code/URL? Because they wanted something specific that they were looking at RIGHT THEN. If I’m looking at a Corvette ad in an in-flight magazine, do I want to go to Chevy.com or do I want to go to the page that describes the smokin’ Vette I’m looking at?
The primary reason to use QR codes
Consider how annoying it is to navigate not-so-mobile-friendly sites on a smartphone. Make yours the friendly, easy site for mobile users.
Make your customers’ lives easier. Make it easier for them to visit your site, visit the right page and share something about your business that they want to share.
Ask anyone in the publishing business about pass-along numbers. They’re important to readership, so much so that they claim pass-along readership as an asset to advertisers.
Transfer that thought to your website, catalog, ads and other materials. Do those printed items need QR codes so that people can view/share them easily?
I think so.
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a business, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at mriffey@flatheadbeacon.com.
