Topic
QR codes that customers actually scan
Placement, wording and payload choices for venues, retail and print campaigns.
A technically perfect code that nobody scans has failed just as completely as one that will not decode. In practice the gap between a code that gets used and one that gets ignored has very little to do with the code itself.
It comes down to whether people can tell what will happen when they scan, and whether the code is somewhere they can comfortably reach with a phone already in their hand.
The advice grouped here is about that side of the problem: labelling, placement, choosing a payload that removes friction rather than adding it, and making reprints cheap because whatever you print will be wrong within a year.
What you'll learn here
- Why three words underneath a code change its scan rate more than any design decision.
- Where codes actually get scanned in a venue, and where they get ignored.
- Which payload removes the most friction — and why the highest-value code in most venues never gets printed.
- How to set things up so the inevitable reprint takes thirty seconds.
5 guides
GuidesQR codes on product packaging
Packaging codes face curved surfaces, gloss varnish and absorbent substrates, and they often outlive the campaign that created them.
GuidesQR codes for events, tickets and badges
Event codes are scanned in the worst conditions a code ever faces: dim venues, moving queues, phone screens at low brightness.
GuidesQR codes on business cards that people actually scan
Keep the payload as short as possible, because a business card code is typically only 2cm square.
GuidesWi-Fi QR codes: the one most venues never print
A Wi-Fi QR code encodes the network name, security type and password so a phone can join without typing.
GuidesQR codes for restaurants and retail that people actually scan
The single biggest improvement is telling people what happens when they scan.
Common questions
- Should a restaurant menu code be static or dynamic?
- Static, pointing at a stable URL on your own domain. You can change what lives at that URL whenever the menu changes, with no reprint and no subscription.
- How big should a QR code be on a table tent?
- Around 2 to 3cm across works for a code read at roughly 30cm. Scale up for anything read from further away, following the same one-tenth-of-distance rule.
- Do QR code menus annoy customers?
- The code rarely does; the destination usually does. A PDF that needs pinching and zooming frustrates people, while a fast mobile-friendly page does not. Keeping a few paper menus costs almost nothing.
Related topics
Choosing a code type
Static or dynamic, and which payload format actually does what you want.
Scannability
The practical engineering of getting a code to read reliably, off paper, in bad light, on someone else's phone.
Build a code with these rules applied
The generator shows a live contrast reading and blocks corner shape pairings our testing found unreadable, so most of what you just read is enforced as you design.
Open the generator