What the heck is a QR Code?

If you have never heard of QR codes, you aren’t alone.  But unless you’ve been under a rock the chances are good you have seen one without even realizing what it is for.

QR stands for Quick Response.  This fancy name makes a simple idea seem more complex.  A QR code is nothing but an upgraded version of a barcode.  Almost everyone can understand the barcode concept.  When you are at the grocery store and you buy a case of your favorite beverage, the clerk runs it across a scanner to pick up a mark that might look something like this:

The scanner reads these bars from left to right, converts this to a number, and determines what item is being purchased.  QR codes are a similar concept with one major difference.  Instead of a scanner reading strictly left to right, the QR code is a grid that is read left to right AND top to bottom.  The benefit to this second dimension is that the code can hold much more data within a practical size limit.  QR codes can easily contain URLs, email addresses, or any kind of text based data you can imagine.  The two dimensional nature of the code makes it look kind of like a crossword puzzle:

Why does this matter to retailers?

One word: smartphones.  Consumers are increasingly connected to the Internet as part of their daily lives.  The most frequent use of QR codes in product marketing is to provide a bridge between the print based world and the online world.  All modern smartphones can scan a QR code and take the consumer directly to an encoded URL.

QR codes are not quite as common in the United States as in other nations, such as Japan or the United Kingdom.  They are catching on here though and represent a very big opportunity for merchants to build interactions to an ever more  tech-savvy customer base.

How does it work?

Imagine a potential customer is leafing through a magazine and spies two advertisements.  Also for the sake of the example imagine they are quite similar:

Both companies are making use of user friendly URLs.  But typing these URLs out on a mobile phone can be tedious.  The imaginary Silver Star Corp. has taken their advertisement a step farther by providing their URL in QR code format.  If you are an interested consumer who recognizes this mark, you press a button on your phone to launch a QR decoder application, point your phone camera toward the code, and presto!  The URL will be decoded for the consumer within the blink of an eye.  If Gold Star and Silver Star are selling similar products, and it’s easier for the consumer to get to Silver Star’s link, they might never make it to the other site.

It’s all about making things easier for smartphone users.  Typing things out is sooo 2010.

Uses with AbleCommerce

All versions of AbleCommerce can be used with QR codes since they are simply a means of presenting encoded text to a consumer device (smartphone, tablet computer, etc).  You might use one to encode the URL of a particular product in a printed advertisement, or perhaps you wish to include a QR code for your website on your business cards.  This concept might seem new and strange now, but there was once a time when printing a website address on a business card seemed new and strange.

There are many Internet resources that can help you create QR codes.  Just search in your favorite engine for qr code generator and you will have plenty to choose from.  Playing with one of these tools is a good way to experiment and learn more.

If you are an occasional user of QR codes in marketing campaigns a site like this would be sufficient.   But to if you wish to take it a step farther and actively use these codes, we have some free code samples that can make your life easier.

Sample 1 is a new page for creating QR Codes with any content you desire.  Installation instructions cover how to add a QR Codes option on your admin marketing menu.

Sample 2 is a shortcut from the product page.  This modification will allow you to add a button to the edit product page so that you can quickly obtain the QR code for a URL pointing to the product.  Clicking on the button will display the QR code in a popup.

Both of the samples are in a combined ZIP file with installation instructions that can be downloaded here.

Posted in AbleCommerce 7 Marketing
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