iPhones Now Read QR Codes With the Camera

No app needed

QR codes have been printed on posters and packaging for years, and mostly ignored. Scanning one needed an app, and most people never installed one.

Since Tuesday, that has changed for iPhones. With iOS 11, the ordinary camera recognises a code: point it, a banner appears at the top of the screen, and a tap opens the link.

As iPhones update over the coming weeks, a great many pockets will hold a code reader, and that changes which printed codes are worth the space.

Where a code earns its space

• Menus and takeaway bags, held while people decide or wait.
• Shop windows, read by passers-by when you are closed.
• Posters at counters and stops, where people stand still.
• Packaging and labels, pointing to instructions or reordering.
• Business cards and invoices, opening one useful page.
• Event tickets and flyers, linking to details that may change.

The second is the most useful for a business with set hours. A passer-by at nine at night cannot ask anyone, and a code in the window can open the menu, the hours and how to order.

Where it does not

A code needs a person standing still, close enough, with a moment to spare. Billboards and moving vans fail all three.

A van parked outside a job for a day is different: neighbours walk past it, and a code by the door can open the page about that kind of work.

Codes on your website, in emails or on social posts are usually pointless, because the reader is already holding the phone that would have to scan them.

And codes printed too small, too high, on a curved cup or behind shiny glass frustrate the people most willing to try.

Not everyone can scan yet

iOS 11 runs on the iPhone 5s and later. Owners of older models, and anyone who has not updated, still need an app.

Android phones vary by make. Some read codes through the camera or a built-in option, and many still need an app from the store.

So a code should never be the only way to reach the page. The printed address beside it is the route for everyone else.

Point it at the right page

A code should open the page that matches where it was printed. A menu code opens the menu. A van code opens that service. Packaging opens the instructions or the reorder page.

The home page is almost never right. Whoever scanned had a specific reason, and a home page makes them hunt for it on a small screen.

The page has to work on a phone: fast, readable without zooming, with the phone number ready to tap. A code that leads to a page built for desktops wastes the effort it took to scan.

Use an address you control

A printed code cannot be changed. The page it opens can, if the code leads to a short link on your own website, set up to forward visitors to the real page.

Then, when the menu page moves or the offer ends, a redirect changes in a minute and a thousand printed menus keep working.

Some free generators make codes that point to the generator's own short address instead. If that service changes its terms or closes, the codes stop working, and the iPhone banner shows the generator's web address rather than yours.

Make it easy to scan

Print it large enough for the distance it will be read from: a window code needs to be far bigger than one on a business card.

Keep it dark on a light background, with a plain margin around it, on a flat, matte surface. Test the printed proof with several phones, in the light where it will hang.

Print the short web address beside it, for people whose phones do not read codes.

A worked example

An empanada shop near a transit station sells takeaway at lunch and frozen dozens to take home, and takes catering orders from offices nearby.

In the spring it printed a QR code on its paper menus and its window, made with a free online generator and pointing to the home page. Almost nobody used it, since scanning needed an app.

This week the owner tried it on an updated iPhone. The banner offered to open the generator's short address, and the page that followed was a large photograph, with the menu a file two taps away.

The mechanism: both the code and the page were made for a visitor who did not exist. A person outside the window wants the menu, the hours and how to order, in that order.

The new code opens a short link on the shop's own website, which forwards to a phone-friendly menu page with the hours, the order-ahead number and the catering form.

The window and the menus carry separate codes with different campaign tags, and the short address is printed under each.

Count the scans

Add campaign tags to the address each code opens: short labels on the end of the link that Analytics reads as the source of the visit. Use a different tag for each placement: the window, the menu, the van.

Analytics then shows visits from each code as a separate source. After a month you will know which placements people actually use, and which code can come off the next print run.

The counter-case

Codes are not worth adding everywhere. A small newspaper ad, a sign read from a car, or material for people unlikely to scan gains clutter and little else.

A short, memorable web address does the same job in many places, and it works on every phone.

And a code is only as good as the page behind it. If that page is not ready for phones, fix the page before printing anything.

Where people hold the paper or stand in front of it, though, a code pointed at the right page now earns its place.

Before you print

1. Decide what each code is for.
2. Choose or build the page it will open.
3. Check that page on a phone.
4. Create a short address on your own domain.
5. Add campaign tags for each placement.
6. Test printed proofs with several phones.
7. Print the address beside the code.

Step four protects the print run. A code cannot change once it is on a thousand menus, but the page its short address leads to can change whenever you need.

The other new way people reach your business directly is covered in anyone can now ask a question on your Google listing.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.