I’ve been a big fan of using QR codes in marketing strategies for many years. Ever since the smartphone became something that nearly everyone had in their pocket, the QR code has been a pretty nifty bridge to take you from the physical world as we know it to the magical land of the internet simply by pointing your phone at the black and white blocked squares. If memory serves me correct, the first REAL phone I owned was the G1 which was one of, if not the first phone to run Android by Google. The G1 amazingly enough had an app for scanning QR codes. At the time it was absolutely astounding to scan codes but there weren’t many ways to actually generate QR codes efficiently or free for that matter. Now you can spot QR codes on everything from Heinz Ketchup bottles and TV commercials to the trailer of a remodeling company and the invoices they send to their customers which should scream to you that they still work. In fact, today’s smartphones make it easier than ever to scan a QR code because all you need to do is open your phone’s camera and point whereas previously you needed an app that was almost always ad sponsored to scan.
Local Web Design and Online Marketing in Kansas City, MO
What’s interesting about QR codes is that they aren’t necessarily a new thing. In fact, they’ve been around for many years before the advent of smartphones or the widespread use of the internet as we know it today. QR codes are essentially bar codes but they are read quite differently and are capable of storing much more information. The first bar codes were developed in the 1960s in Japan where the country was experiencing huge economic growth, especially in retail industries. Grocery store cashiers, at the time, had to hand key in prices and products which is not only inefficient but it was also exhausting. Once in use, the bar code revolutionized product pricing, inventory management, and global commerce as we know it. However, the bar code was soon found to have limitations most specifically in the amount of information that could be stored with an individual code. A typical bar code could only store around 20 alphanumeric characters of information which isn’t a whole lot. Plus, a bar code can only be read in one direction (left to right) with a singular scanner device (today’s bar code scanners have since fixed this with more advanced scanning techniques). That’s where Denso Wave Incorporated enters the picture as they were already developing more advanced code reading capabilities that could store much more information than a simple bar code. The QR code they were developing could be scanned unidirectional meaning no matter which way it’s facing or which angle you’re scanning from, it can easily and flawlessly be read. As expected, it took many years and a ton of trial and error before it worked seamlessly. Fast forward to 1994 when the Denso Corporation finally released the QR code as we know it to the public in Japan which prompted the Japanese automobile industry to quickly integrate the codes into auto parts and production processes. They were immensely popular (mostly in Japan) but they soon faded away from the public eye until around 2002 when the explosion of smartphones allowed everyone to have a scanner in the palm of their hand. As everyone on the planet began to get their hands on every increasingly powerful smartphone devices, the use of the QR code rose as well. QR codes have been used on everything from coupons and security badges to airline boarding passes and so much more (just look around and you’ll likely find a QR code on something near you). QR codes seemed to disappear for a number of years especially for public use and applications but with the most recent smartphones equipped with a code scanner in their camera app, they have seen a huge resurgence. While you would think that inventing something as useful and globally used as the QR code would make the inventor insanely rich, the creator did in fact patent the code but opted to allow public use without restriction.
Today it’s pretty simple to create a custom QR code for businesses or for whatever. At Web Force KC, we use them to help our clients get better customer reviews, direct their customers to non-public pages on their websites, add to their social media presence, promote sales, and many more applications and functions that are easily accessible to anyone with a smartphone. We strive to find new and creative ways to use QR codes for our clients to help them grow their businesses.
If you enjoyed reading this blog, do us a favor and pull out your smartphone, open up your camera, point it at the QR code below, follow the link, and write a review for Web Force KC. We would appreciate it!
Call Web Force KC at (816) 462-9128 for web design and online marketing in Kansas City.
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