QR codes (or Quick Response Codes) are making more of an appearance and appear to offer quite a few neat features to those who can read them (directing someone to a mobile or website, displaying a message, providing contact information or sending an SMS message).
Scan me!
With smart phone uptake predicted to climb during the next year along with barcode scanning applications becoming increasingly popular on the various mobile application stores, QR Codes are becoming more and more accessible.
The concept has proved very successful in Japan, with 90% of mobile users recognising these codes as something they scan with their mobile and over 50% of this making use of the feature, this has been helped by the adoption of QR readers into mobile handsets as pre-installed software. If the trend for mobile scanning in the UK is to increase then it may not be long before the majority of handsets support QR codes out of the box.
Combining codes into print work adds a level of user interaction to otherwise flat media and provides useful feedback for those managing the campaign, it is possible for instance to track your volume of viewers from location or from the media type you featured the code. Great news if you want to find out where your advertising is best suited, plus for us lot who are scanning we can quickly access or bookmark information to view on the move or when we get back to the office/home – much easier than trying to type a web address into your phone!
There are quite a few QR readers available and the number of mobiles supported is growing each day, a few examples of readers we tried are:
Kaywa Reader
Nokia Reader
i-nigma Reader
