QR Codes – What they are and How they work
What are QR Codes?
Have you spotted a square black and white square image in a magazine, on an envelope in your mailbox or on a business card and wondered what they are? Welcome to the exciting marketing tool of QR Codes.
QR Codes – or Quick Response Codes are not new. They have been around since 1994 and were created by the Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave and are very popular in Japan. They were initially used for tracking stock parts in vehicle manufacturing. What is relatively new is the growing trend to use QR codes in marketing.
Similar to price barcodes found on the packaging of grocery store items, the smart code of QR Codes hold a great deal more information with up to 7,000 alphanumeric characters (both vertical and horizontal directions). Examples of the types of information that QR Code can hold include website addresses, phone numbers and business card information as text (Name, position, address, etc.)
How do QR Codes work?
QR code requires a scanner. To scan a QR code, you will need a smart phone with a camera and a QR code reader. The QR code reader snaps a photo of the QR code and directs you to the information in the code such as a website URL, a phone number or a vCard (electronic business card) with text.
Of the QR code readers we tested for iPhone, the Quickmark QR Reader for $1.99 worked the best. If you scan the QR Code above, you will be taken to R & R Web Design LLC’s Web site URL.
What are your thoughts? Do you think that QR Codes will be an effective marketing tool?
Nice article, I recently launched socialqrcode{dot}com. It is a QR Code generator designed for business to promote their Facebook/Twitter properties with QR Codes. Turn foot traffic into web traffic for your fan page and twitter profile!
Please, give it a try!
Tyler,
Great tool! Thank you for sharing your QR Code generator. It works great!