People will scan a code when three things are true at once. They can reach it, they have a reason to, and they have a spare moment.
Miss any one of those and the code is decoration. That is why a code on a table tent outperforms the same code on a billboard by an enormous margin.
Put it where people are already waiting
Waiting is the best possible moment. Somebody sitting at a table, standing in a queue, or in a waiting room has time and nothing to do with it.
Compare that to a code on the side of a moving bus, which nobody has ever successfully scanned. Attention is the resource, not visibility.
- Tables and counters
- Queue barriers and waiting areas
- Receipts, handed over at the end
- Packaging, opened at home
- Shop windows, read while closed
Get the height and angle right
A code below knee height or above head height means crouching or reaching, and people will not do either for a poster. Roughly chest to eye level is the comfortable band.
Flat surfaces beat curved ones. A code wrapped around a bottle or a pole distorts, and a distorted code is a code that takes three tries.
Say what it does
A bare square is a question mark. People have learned that scanning something unlabelled can lead anywhere, so plenty simply will not.
Four or five words fixes it. Scan for the menu. See the full spec. Join our Wi-Fi. Tell people what they get and the hesitation disappears.
- Use a frame with a short caption
- Say the benefit, not the mechanism
- Keep it to about five words
- Match the wording to the destination
One code per placement
If you put the same code on a poster, a flyer and your packaging, the scan numbers arrive as one lump and tell you nothing about which one worked.
Give each placement its own code pointing at the same page. It costs nothing and turns a vague total into an actual comparison.
Check it survives the real world
A code that works in the studio can fail in the location for reasons that have nothing to do with the design.
Glare from a window or a spotlight
A dim corner with no light at all
Wear on a sticker touched all day
Something parked in front of it
See how this applies to Retail & Products.
Quick answers
Keep reading
Why a QR code fails to scan, and how to stop it happening
Most unscannable codes fail for one of five boring reasons. None of them are the phone's fault, and all of them are fixable before you print.
BasicsStatic or dynamic: which QR code should you actually use?
One is permanent and works offline. The other can be edited and counted. The right answer depends on one question about your printing.
AnalyticsWhat QR scan analytics actually tell you (and what they don't)
Scan data is genuinely useful and routinely over-read. Here is what the numbers mean, and the conclusions people jump to that the data does not support.
Try it yourself
Everything described here takes about a minute to set up.