Saturday, April 16, 2011

In the wild - VIII

QR codes continue to be fairly rare, even though there is a lot more "buzz" about them on-line and in the news. Ninety-nine percent of the (few) examples that I come across are in print publications, and not all of them are particularly well executed.

One example of a failure is shown below, a Google print ad. The QR code was very 'dense' and also very small... and unreadable (I tried five different QR readers)...




The program at the theater had an advertisement with a QR code. This resolved to their on-line store... Certainly mobile-friendly, so reasonably well executed. However, one wonders how many people would be likely to actually use the occasion (e.g. at the intermission) to go on-line and do some shopping (versus, say, logging on using their desktop or tablet when they got back home - a choice between squinting at a small screen and trying to enter your credit card number vs. the greater real-estate of a desktop/tablet screen).

I guess it doesn't cost any more to include a small QR code in a print advertisement (i.e. to what is already a sunk cost) to catch the incremental one or two people who might use it, but it doesn't seem like a very value-added implementation!


Blog entries referencing QR codes:
QR codes in the wild
BB QR readers (20 links)
QR- and Tag-related entries (18 links)

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