I‘ll admit it. I’ve never really been convinced by QR codes. Until Now.
There I was, however, watching Mr Teen playing a soccer match at the weekend when I happened to glance at some housing adverts on a noticeboard.
I’ve no idea what they were doing there but the thing that caught my attention was the way they were using QR codes.
Here’s What Caught My Eye
Each poster was a For Sale poster that showed a picture of the house, the estate agent handling the sale and the house details; there at the bottom of each advert next to the instructions to get details via SMS was a large QR code.
Anyone who knows what a QR code is would have known what to do immediately.
I grasped what these adds were doing immediately and realized the beauty of the implementation at once. They were there to make life so much easier.
QR Code Best Practice
What I mean is that if you saw an ad you liked, all you had to do was snap the code with your QR reader on your smart phone and bingo: you got the contact details of the estate agent and a link to take you to the property’s listing on the agent’s website where, of course, you’d be able to get all the details and pictures you’d expect as well as an online mortgage request form.
This was a perfect way of delivering real benefit to the end user.
Real benefit?
Yes!
It was pouring with rain at the match. The last thing I wanted to do was type a long URL, reference number, etc. Instead, all I needed to do was snap the code. Then I could just open it all up at home, forwarding the link to my email account. If I was REALLY keen I could check out the full details on my smart phone then and there without having to try and type a URL on that (wretched) small virtual keyboard.
Sure, you could have taken a quick picture of the property details, and I’m sure those people that don’t know what a QR code is will no doubt do that. Those of us that do know what they are, however, can reap the benefit.
Transferable Skill
I don’t think the same kind of strategy works with a store advertising a generic product because anyone just needs to Google the product to find the cheapest retailer. In this case, though, it seemed to work perfectly because it’s virtually impossible to remember a reference number, the name of an estate agent and the look of a property ad if you see it on the go. But the QR code here really helps.
I saw plenty of QR codes at the Stockholm hgh school fair, Gymnasiemässan, last December, but here I didn’t see the need for them. Students remember the name of schools. The brand is too easily remembered. A house or apartment, though, seems to be a different matter entirely.
What about you? What do you think is the best use of a QR codes you’ve come across? Or do you think they’re just not worth the hassle. Or how are you using them?
I’ve never really been convinced by QR codes. Until Now. [Click to tweet]
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