Use QR Code as an integration tool of offline campaigns with the online ones
The latest buzzword to hit the web world is the ‘QR Code’. My objective here is to put my understanding about this phenomenon and to communicate to you whether there is any substance in this or it is just one other technical application having no real use.
What is a QR Code?
QR Code stands for “Quick Response” and is a mobile phone readable barcode that’s been very popular in Japan forever and now getting footing globally.
I write this with the assumption that all who are reading this are aware what a QR code is? Being a SEO professional, I was interested to know the impact of QR code on site traffic. I wanted to understand how this thing can drive traffic to the site and how this tool can be usefully and rationally deployed, from the visitor perspective?
Here is what I have to say -
From the web perspective, it is possible to create a QR code for your website address or even for the URL of a specific page of your website. Growing number of people now are owning smart phones preloaded with scanners which can read QR codes. Google android phones do have this feature. When somebody scans the QR code he is straight away directed to the URL in the code. It is that simple!
Now the question – How is this useful? As far as I can make out, businesses which are selling through web can immediately go for this. As most of their business is through web, they can couple their offline advertising programs with the QR code. For example, ebay can generate a QR code for the landing page of a new product it is promoting offline and put this QR code in all of its advertisements. It hardly takes any space and therefore does not translate in to consumption of the expensive advertising space. Any reader who is interested in the advertised products and has a scanner enabled phone can go to the site just by scanning the printed code on the advertisement. QR code therefore becomes a tool to make your offline campaigns drive instant traffic to your site. What more, these visits can be recorded enabling one to measure the success of the campaign. Efficacy measurement is a big problem with the offline campaigns.
The other more long lasting application of the QR code is that it can be printed/glued to the products that a business is selling. A person who happens to find the product anywhere can scan it and know about your business. Needless to say that someone is likely to take this pain only if he likes it or is interested in the product.
The only problem with the QR code is that its success depends heavily on the usage of the scanner enabled mobile phones and also on the tendency of the owners of these smart phones to use the gadget.
All in all I see the QR Code as integration tool of offline campaigns with the online ones.
Related Websites- Proper Search Engine Optimization When Using Google Adsense On Your Web-Site
- Search Engine Optimization Keyword Analysis
- SEO Facts You Can't Afford To Overlook
Tags: QR Code
This entry was posted on Friday, December 31st, 2010 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Google, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
5 Responses to “Use QR Code as an integration tool of offline campaigns with the online ones”
Leave a Reply
Careers @ SEO
Very cool to read about technology from other parts of the world that haven’t quite hit here yet. This certainly sounds like it will be huge! Do you see this having any serious problems in the U.S.? i.e.: resistance similar to that of online shopping due to fear of identity theft, etc.? Or do you think this will take over easily? Thanks.
Thanks for this. I had no idea what a QR code was prior to reading this. I’m not sure it’s going to take off that rapidly though. But who knows …
ts so informative and have much knowledge about the topic, I would love to share it on ma faceboook, thanks for sharing such a nice post.
Really interesting read. I was in China quite a while ago and this was already being used as shopping coupons. I only noticed this in 2010 but it could have been widely used before that. Many large-scale stores has QR scanners/readers at their counters and if you received or collected a QR barcode coupon on your phone you were eligible of receiving their discounts. Really cool I thought. Now I’m building a new website for the company I work at, and I’m really looking to integrate this into the website, especially because many new camera phones have pre-installed QR readers. It’s fun, and many people with such technology on their phones might be curious to find out the hidden message behind the barcodes. So why not?
Great post thanks, it appears that QR codes are one to look out for. I feel they could be extremely profitable to any organisation as it would provide another dimension to their advertisements. People could use them in standard newspaper advertisements to offer an instant money off voucher etc.