RetailQR code
QR codes on screens: when they help
A code on a screen needs time, size and a destination worth visiting on a phone. Four questions to ask before adding one.
QR codes appear more and more often on screens in retail and waiting areas, and quite often they are never scanned. The cause is rarely the code and usually its position. Four questions settle before installation whether it will achieve anything.
1. Does anyone have time? A code takes seconds: phone out of the pocket, open the camera, aim, wait. Passing a shop window that almost never works; in a waiting room or at the till it does. The code belongs where people stand still or sit.
2. Is it big enough and on screen long enough? On a screen that changes every few seconds, a code that only flashes by is useless. It should stay still, have a light border and be capturable from where people are.
3. Is the destination worth it on a phone? Whoever scans expects a page made for the phone that loads at once and shows the promised thing: the appointment, the menu, the form.
4. Does one sentence say what happens? "Scan here" is not enough. "Book an appointment" or "View the menu" names the benefit.
Two notes from operations: check the code now and then, because destinations change. And anyone who wants to count visitors does so through the destination address, not through personal data; that is a matter for data protection officers, and this article is not legal advice.
This magazine is published by Kapaso GmbH; the article refers to no product.
