Quick guide to QR codes

Admin on 13/04/2022

What to use QR codes for

QR codes are used to do lots of things that connect offline to online:

  • Email – Email address, subject and message that
  • Geolocation – Location that can be opened in Google Maps.
  • Image – Display an image.
  • PDF – Display a PDF file.
  • Phone – Display a phone number
  • SMS – Phone number and message to be sent as an SMS.
  • Text – Display written text.
  • URL – Open a webpage.
  • vCard – Contact information to add to the phone’s contact list.
  • WiFi – Information to connect to WiFi.

Choosing a QR code service

There are lots of free QR code generators available on the web but it’s impossible to know how reliable these are and whether they might stop working one day soon. The Wix website has a QR code generator and states that the code will not expire and does not have any limits to how many times it can be scanned, making this a reliable free option for generating the code.

Tracking

If you want to know how many people have scanned the QR code you can add a tracking append to the URL before you generate the QR code. Then you’ll be able to track scans of the code in Google Analytics.

Generating the QR code

With the Wix’s service you can change the colour hex code to your brand colour, but be sure to check there is still enough contrast for the scan to work.

Printing the QR code

The code can be downloaded from Wix as a 1000px png, svg and jpg. It’s a good idea to check with the printers that this is of sufficient quality before having the leaflets printed, and if you can, check a proof version of the leaflet to test that the code can be scanned.