QR codes and the web

[Leona]

Yes not many people seem to get it but it is getting there, there are so many posibilites for cross platform promotion it is unreal. I don't want to give to much away on an open forum but we are introducing it with a number of clients where items in the real world are being accompanied with a QR code that links to multimedia content. All of our new business cards, marketing documentation and correspondance documents will also have a code once I have launched our new website.

[Rooftop]

To me the problems seems to be that geeks and marketers are in to them, but the public isn't.  Needs some big players to put more freebies on the end of a QR code to get people engaged with them.

[bill]

As you mentioned earlier this has been popular in Japan for many years. They're on everything. Every phone in Japan can read them. The only phone I've owned recently that didn't natively support QR codes out of the box was the iPhone 3G. Many saw this as a sign that Apple phones would fail in Japan. It didn't take long for an app to come out to handle that functionality. You really do need to have a QR code reader to get along in many areas of Japanese society, thus I had assumed all phones sold here could handle them.

QR codes may have taken a while to become common in Japan, but once people realized what they were then marketers put them on everything. Every fast-food restaurant has QR codes on their packaging that gives links to pages about their products or promotions. Posters in public transportation, stations, kiosks, and other public places often use them instead of a URL. I know of a particularly difficult to navigate underground mall where they use QR codes to link to maps to help visitors navigate. Nobody wants to type in a URL on their phone, so QR codes have long been the defacto standard here. What took you guys so long to catch up? ;-)

[Gurtie]

we're not caught up yet

I noticed today the Metro (major commuter paper on trains and buses in South England - not sure about up North) is using qr codes for their in-paper promos rather than url's now.

[Gurtie]

>tattoos

http://www.psfk.com/2011/07/qr-code-tattoo-makes-your-heart-sing.html

[Rupert]

I saw that here:
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/it-downtime-blog/2011/07/meet-qr-man.html

a slightly humorous take .

[dogboy]

I'm trying to get it, but I keep on thinking there is a lot more I'm missing. Everyone is using this thing in place of something I could have understood... and in most cases, a URL. So why not just put the URL? Why take out your phone and go through the hassle?

It makes me think it's marketing spin.  i followed the links (above) and read about a cool idea where a coffee shop put these ads at train stations (near their shops) and people in a rush could pre-order their coffee.  But all the QR code did was make them curious and bring them to the url of an app.

[dogboy]

I keep thinking there is some kind of lock and key opportunity here, between customer and retailer. Also, how much more complex relationships between things get, because of the added dimension of your physical location (at times).  And if the QR content has data associated with (or generated by) the customer, then that opens up a whole bunch of other possibilities. Same with knowing a person is at a given place, at a given time. (But that only depends if the desired action takes place offline. etc.)

[anallawalla]

I'm trying to get it, but I keep on thinking there is a lot more I'm missing. Everyone is using this thing in place of something I could have understood... and in most cases, a URL. So why not just put the URL? Why take out your phone and go through the hassle?

It's quicker to pull out the phone and start the QR code reader than to type in a long URL, since these usually point to a special landing page and not the home page. In Australia, my phone company doesn't include a reader with the iPhone they stock and I had to add it manually. This would be a barrier to adoption.

3-4 years ago a previous employer (Yellow Pages) had done a trial of placing the codes in shop windows and one of the issues was that glass interferes with proper reading of the code. I wasn't close to the trial but the people involved were put off that idea for good.

[Rooftop]

Saw 2 interesting QR code related things last week:

1. QR Code on a gravestone : http://mashable.com/2011/07/15/qr-code-tombstone/
2. BBC Using QR Codes on a cooking programme . Haven't got a grab of this though sadly - however I was particularly pleased with this as the use of them is what is needed to encourage take up: ie it was mass market, a trusted source, useful and them explained it ("scan this for recipe" I think - mention of phone would have been better).

[Gurtie]

I saw the cookery programme ones and no one believes me! Would probably help if I could remember what programme....

I'm interested to see how well it works as apparantly glass interferes with the readers, although it generally works off a computer screen so I guess no different?

[Brad]

Wait so I can scan a QR code off a LED screen?

Here in the Mid-west US QR codes seem to be only used on a few real estate agent signs and by package shipping companies. I suspect this will change quickly but here in flyover country we tend to lag behind The Coasts by months or years even.

@bill - are the phones in Japan mainly feature phones with some scan and web ability or are they mainly smartphones?  I know my old iPhone had no bar code reader app although I'm sure they are available, and I just downloaded one for the Android phone. Point being, the smartphones in the US don't seem to have apps already installed.

[dogboy]

>the smartphones in the US don't seem to have apps already installed.
I thought Androids do but iphones dont(?)

>It's quicker to pull out the phone and start the QR code reader than to type in a long URL
then we need an app that takes a picture of a url and makes it a hot link?  Seems like that isn't too far off. But I get you... deep links, possibly with additional user info (like location.)

>there is a lot more I'm missing.
I'm getting the hang of it now... I'm not used to offline marketing:) The reality these things can be used in a LOT of different ways... they can be used for really simple things, as well as connecting a person at a certain time and real-life location to a website... and then getting that person to act either online or off. And like I said before, if the user generates the QR and the merchant scans it, it opens up a whole other set of options.

Pretty cool:)

[Brad]

>will scan from a phone screen

Wow. That is cool. Like dogboy said the possibilities are endless. It's kinda mind boggling to me.

Now I have a question on QR's and privacy: if I use my smartphone to scan a QR and go to the website what kind of info can they pick up about me: GPS coords, phone number, OS, browser, carrier?  Sorry if this is a stupid question but I've heard some FUD on the topic.

[bill]

@Brad
The majority of phones in Japan are still feature phones. Smartphones only have about 8% of the market. The rest are very advanced feature phones that receive digital TV broadcasts, have NFC wallets, contain media players, and of course have QR code readers built in. Back in the old days we'd have to make special WAP or cHTML pages for the QRcode landing pages for these phones, but today they all have full browsers built in.

> privacy
In general practice with a straight URL the people on the other end would get whatever info a web server could get. Your phone isn't broadcasting GPS or other info to websites unless you have an app or something else in there. A QRcode is just a URL, phone number, or some text that can be scanned.