Whether you're rich, poor, British, foreign, young, old - you can enjoy the treasures of our museums and galleries.

Of course, while museums are funded by the state, they still rely on generating some external revenue - hence the ubiquitous gift shop and major corporate donations.

In the front of most museums, you'll find a vessel for collecting donations. Usually half full with pound coins, Euros, and Dollars. On entering the British Museum recently, I saw a new way to donate - QR codes!

Let's take a closer look at that code:

If you scan it, your QR reader should prompt you to send a Premium Rate SMS to 70070 - a charity donation service run by Just Giving.

Just about anyone with a UK SIM will be able to send a fiver - no messing about with passwords, logging in, credit card numbers - it comes straight off the phone bill.

Setting It Up

It's really very easy to use the SMS feature of QR codes. Assuming you've already got a number which can receive messages, you simply need to enter this text into your QR code:

SMSTO:07700900617:Hello

Which will appear as:

Scan it and you QR scanner should open up your SMS app, and you can choose whether to send or not.

So, there you go! A really simple way to turn QR codes into donations using the ubiquitous SMS.

Errr.... yes... It's pretty damn simple! I was surprised I couldn't find anyone else doing this.

 (\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

Becomes:

Which, when scanned, renders as:

Now, there are limits as to what you can put into a QR code - about 4,000 characters. Different devices have different screen widths, which limits the ability to include fully featured ASCII Artworks like the Mona Lisa

It's always nice when other companies imitate your success - and it's always amusing when they fall slightly short of the mark.

Lots of items in stores have QR codes on them. There's a limit to how much information you can cram onto packaging. It gives the customers more information, helps them buy the right product, and reduces the number of questions they ask a sales assistant. QR FTW?

If you look closely at the above package, you'll see a QR nestled in the corner. Sadly, the plastic around is is deforming it. This, of course, renders the code completely unscanable.

If you need help with your QR code, follow my 10 simple steps for perfect QR codes, or if you need some bespoke consultancy give me a call.

In particular, I like the way The Pirate Bay (and others) have used QR codes to facilitate easy payments and donations. The QR codes contain only three variables - the payment method (BitCoin), the destination, and a message. As this is a donation there is no value set. There is a full specification for a BitCoin URI scheme which I think is fairly well designed.

I envisage a day when, on asking for the bill at a restaurant, I am presented with a paper slip totting up my purchases with a neat QR code printed at the bottom. Scanning the code will pull up my banking or credit card app and allow me to make a payment. A verifiable receipt is either shown on screen or sent directly to the restaurant.

For example:

PAY:
 WHO:Pizza Palace
 IBAN:GB29NWBK60161331926819
 CUR:EUR
 VAL:27.35
 REF:123456qwerty
 TIME:1370886496

That's enough human readable information - and machine data - to ensure the correct payment gets from one person to another. I'm sure there are some other fields which may be advantageous to add; tax rate, specific location, etc. But it certainly all fit within a QR code.

QR codes can easily be printed out using the current infrastructure of mobile POS terminals. Those terminals already have mobile network access so can be alerted in real-time when the payment is made. IBAN means we have an easy(ish) way to uniquely identify payment destinations. And, in the UK at least, we have a fairly rapid payments infrastructure.

What's needed is a simple standard and mobile banking and credit card apps to support it.

Simple...

I've been tracking the rise of QR codes in advertising for several years now. People keep asking me when NFC will take over for "boring" QR codes - based on the few live NFC examples I've seen in the UK, NFC will be trailing QR for several more years.

Let me talk you through TAP4offers' latest "effort".

The poster is fairly clear about what to expect - although I initially thought that I'd have to stretch to the top of the carriage to scan the NFC tag!

Thankfully, that's not the case. Beside every exit were these combined NFC / QR / SMS stickers. The NFC tag and QR code each had a unique tracking URL, so the owner of the service (Gunars Vucens) can see which method is being used the most. Judging from the URL and the printed information, I would guess each train carriage has a unique code.

Once the code is scanned - this happens.

What - as the kids say - The Fuck? I've no idea how much it costs to do a deal with South West Trains - but someone has wasted their money!

This is the same mistake that Clear Channel made on their QR/NFC posters.

Why bother with this? Seriously? What's the point of installing all these codes? They've been there for months - disappointing everyone who interacts with them.

Despite the advertiser's promise of a relaunch, nothing seems to be happening with these codes.

Gunars

@gunnars_v

New and upcoming #TAP4offers is due to change and expand rapidly in following weeks, keep and eye out! #nfc #tap4 #offers

---

Logo Problems

As well as the general uselessness of the destination, there is another flaw with the service.

Firstly, there's yet another NFC logo! Proxima's report to the GSMA already identified half a dozen common logos. GSMA NFC Logo, NFC Forum's N-Mark, ClearChannel's NFC Mark, etc. etc.

So, overall, a pretty pathetic effort.

If NFC is to overcome its significant obstacles - price, hardware requirements, lack of public awareness - the campaigns underpinning it must be better than this.

But! My my! What's that in the lower left corner? A QR code!

Unsurprisingly, scanning the code takes you directly to the planning application on the web. Although the site isn't specifically designed for mobile, it's light weight enough to access even on a low powered phone. The planning application lets you view and make comments, read the planning application and any associated documents, and track its progress. All rather nifty!

This is close to a perfect use-case for local government use of QR technology.

• QR codes are free (libre and gratis) meaning there's no extra expense for tax payers.
• Increases engagement with the community.
• Reduces friction between citizens and state.
• There's a great call to action (although I got confused when it said "view the application" and thought it might try to install something on my phone!)

So, well done Lambeth for trying something innovative.

Most of the QR codes that I see now are pretty good. They have clear explanatory text, point to mobile websites, and generally follow the Ten Commandments for QR codes.

But, every so often I spot one which really shouldn't have been let out in the wild. A property company (who shall remain nameless to spare their blushes) printed this QR code at the bottom of an advert - beside the logos showing how green and ISO compliant they are.

Wow! It's not that I have monster-sized fingers - that QR code really is tiny.

Let's zoom in and take a look at what the newspaper printing process has done to the code.

As we can see, the printing resolution just isn't sufficient for a code as tiny as this. The fragile pixels become an inconsistent mess, straight lines go wobbly, and the ink bleeds into the whitespace.

QR codes need unambiguous pixels with a clear delineation between content and space. Lines need to be straight, squares need to be square, and the contrast between colours needs to be high. This QR code fails on all levels.

Even if this code had been laser printed onto premium white paper, it would still be too small for many cameras to scan. It would require a macro focus that is lacking in all but high end devices.

One of the most important rules of QR codes is simply "test". This code just doesn't work. It could lead to the greatest mobile experience known to humanity - but if a user can't actually get to it, all is for naught.

I'm a long term fan of QR codes. I know some people don't like the idea of augmenting reality with specific tags for computer vision - but I do. Some people prefer RFID/NFC. Others still prefer dedicated augmented video apps.

As I've written many times before, QR codes have several substantial advantages over alternate technologies.

• QR is a free and open standard.
• Compatible with every phone with a camera.
• No need to build or use a dedicated app.
• Free to generate.

Today, in the canteen, I think I have found the quintessential example of just how radical the open simplicity of QR codes is.

Tiny sachets of salt an pepper. Created in their millions. Given away for free the world over. Each stamped with a unique ID which can be recognised easily by a computer.

For scale, this is how small they are.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that a website about salt is not the most riveting thing in the world. But that's exactly the point! The costs associated with setting this up are close to zero. Amortized over every sachet it's probably less than the cost of a grain of salt.

There's no opportunity cost lost - what else could you stick on the side of a packet that small?

I like the fact that I can instantly see nutritional information and can certainly see it being more useful on larger items. But, again, that's the point. QR codes are free - so you might as well stick them on everything.

It's this dual freedom - free to generate and free to print - which makes QR codes ubiquitous.

The main problem with NFC (aside from lack of readers, inability for a user to tell a tag is present, proximity needed, etc) is cost. Even bought in bulk, those little RFID chips have a price. Buying 20,000 of them to stick on salt packets is an extravagance an unlikely to see any ROI to offset the cost of buying the chips and changing the manufacturing process to incorporate them. Not to mention that the chips can't be recycled easily.

QR Codes? Black ink. If you're already printing onto a surface, QR codes don't require any retooling or any equipment purchases.

I know that in our modern world we often strive for technical excellence, innovation, and quality. However, where there are two relatively compatible technologies, it is usually the cheaper technology which wins.

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words "DON'T PANIC" inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover. —Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Internet of Things will be powered - in part - by QR codes. Try not to get too upset about it.

If you see that a light - or anything else - is damaged, you can scan the QR code and report the issue. There's even a phone number and vanilla URL for those who aren't quite up to speed with new technology.

There's only one slight issue - the QR code points to this site.

The fact that the landing page isn't mobile friendly is bad enough, but what's worse is that they completely fail to take advantage of sending the user to a precise URL.

What should happen is that the URL should be something like

http://qr.camden.gov.uk/light/22

There are two solid reasons for doing this.

1. It saves the user time - take them directly to where they need to go.
2. You can track where users are scanning your codes.

QR codes are free to generate, and cheap to print. You don't need to be stuck in the old way of thinking about how you link the physical world to the digital world.

Imagine if, after scanning, the user was told "You're reporting street light 22 (Bedford Square) as broken. Click here to confirm." And then, perhaps, on the next page "We'd like to stay in touch with you - please enter your details here." which could even be a Facebook / Twitter login.

As the owner of the QR, you can see exactly where and when people are scanning - at the moment, all the council knows is that one of the thousands of QR codes was scanned, but not which one.

It also means that users don't have to fiddle around on their phone's screen too much in order to report a problem. At the moment, they have to navigate through a complex site, fill in a form, and then hope they remembered which number street lamp was busted.

It could be as simple as scan - click - done. A win for users, and a nice set of analytics to monitor.

As I was walking around Camden the other day, I spotted this monstrosity.

I figured with a code that dense, it probable contained a URL to a rubbish iPhone app, or perhaps a link stuffed full of tracking parameters.

Still, what the heck, I scanned it.

What's the bloody point in that?

Here's a guide on "How Not To Screw Up With QR Codes" which I presented at TeaCamp earlier this year.

How Not To Screw Up With QR Codes - at TeaCampLondon from Terence Eden

The campaign itself wasn't that great - a poor call-to-action and a decidedly mobile-unfriendly site - but I was interested in how many people had scanned them. Thanks to bit.ly's practice of exposing everyone's statistics, we can see exactly how well this campaign did.

Wow! Twenty-five thousand scans. It's not as good as Tesco's QR campaign (80k scans and counting) - but it's an interesting data point.

I don't know how many tickets these QR codes were printed on (I didn't see them on every ticket) so it's impossible to know the exact response rate. I do know that the cost of the codes was close to zero - black ink just isn't that expensive - and that part of the ticket isn't utilised for anything else.

QR codes aren't just for marketing hipsters from Shoreditch. They're increasingly popular with the British public, and I look forward to their continued use.

Yes, there in the corner - living in blissful harmony are a QR code and an NFC tag.

There's an excellent call-to-action which even works for people without either a QR reader or NFC scanner.

The destination is this mobile friendly landing page. Of course, you should still boycott Nestle due to their contributing to the unnecessary death and suffering of infants around the world by aggressively marketing baby foods in breach of international marketing standards.. The NFC and QR have different URLs - which should allow the marketing team to see which performed better.

I've been harshly critical of NFC in the past - but this does show a future for both of them.

...And Now...

A few months later, and we can see a flaw in the plan. NFC requires close contact with the phone, so can't be placed on the poster behind the perspex. So it has been stuck on the poster frame.

Which, when the poster campaign moves on, leaves us with this unfortunate situation.

NFC, as I've said before, needs a call-to-action symbol. This project shows that a QR code could be the perfect way to do that. But, remember, whereas a QR code just needs black ink and white paper - and NFC tag requires a little more planning.

I know, I know, I should have used my NFC enabled smartphone - or my chip & pin card. But it turns out most cab drivers prefer cash.

On the screen was one of those ghastly animated adverts. Rather than selling me a mortgage or loan, it was advertising a fast food chain. The ad concluded by telling me to download the app - available on Android, iPhone, Symbian, and BlackBerry.

I was about to snap a photo of the screen, when all of a sudden I noticed something much more interesting on the receipt.

This is why QR codes win again and again. Black ink is ridiculously cheap, and blank paper is in plentiful supply. No retooling is needed to create them, they work with every camera phone.

Can you imagine the cost and logistics involved in converting a cash point to use NFC? Given the achingly small number of NFC handsets what would be the point?

On the back of my cab receipt, I saw another QR code.

Neither campaign is without its faults, but they serve to illustrate how the open nature of QR allows megacorps and sole traders to tap into the same ecosystem.

QR wins because it's cheap to produce, easy to use, free (gratis and libre) and has wide consumer support.

sigh A non-mobile site. With an Adobe Flash plugin in the top right which won't work on any iPhones. Why on Earth do marketing companies insist on pointing phones to non-mobile sites. It really bemuses me. Stations rarely have good signal (too many people leads to local network congestion) and, besides, large sites are a right pig to use on a small screen.

Stats

I've blogged several times about using Bit.ly links in QR codes. With a little bit of hacking (adding at + character to the end of the URL) we can see how many people have been scanning the code.

I don't know how many of these tickets have been printed. That might be a really good conversion rate - but I doubt it. I only noticed the QR code because someone had dropped their ticket and it landed face-down. Realistically, how many people look at the back of their tickets?

The best campaign in the world would fail if it's not put in front of an audience.

A lot of comments on Twitter & Google+ dismissed these results as a success. A typical response was:

70 scans a day? In a city of millions? Rubbish!

This fails to address something that advertisers are conspicuously loathe to reveal - the true "response rate" of any advert is hard to calculate. How many phone calls, visits to a website, or SMS interactions are directly attributable to a regular poster? No one really knows - or, if they know, they're not telling.

For the first time, we're able to see how many people are reacting to an advert, scanning a code, and then visiting a site.

Currently, TfL's campaign is running at 5,000 scans per month - peaking at 259 scans on April 3rd.

Or, 16,000 in the last five months. With a rather nice growth in usage in the last few months.

Here come the nay-sayers....

But... But.... How many sites is that across? Millions of people, thousands of sites, only a few scans? Rubbish!

So, I performed a Freedom of Information request to TfL.

There were around 400 sites showing these posters in November. That may have changed by now.

Ideally, I would have liked TfL to have created a unique QR code for each poster. That way we could see Putney gets more scans than Waterloo, for example. But I appreciate the logistical difficulties of that!

Phone Use

We also get some interesting statistics about the makes of phones that Londoners use:

iPhone has surged ahead - at the expense of Android and BlackBerry. Windows Phone 7 still remains a minority sport.

Haterz Gonna H8

Frankly, I don't care too much what the doom-mongers say. Having over 16,000 responses to a poster campaign sounds like a success to me. And, best of all, the data is open for anyone to investigate.

If you disagree with me - I politely ask you to show your workings :-)

Here are the codes on the posters - click for bigger.

As all the codes use Bit.ly so we can see how well they've performed - click on each one for the latest statistics.

Not the most impressive of campaigns.

Three strong points to note before pointing out how (in)effective QR marketing is:

1. How many clicks would a traditional URL on a poster get?
2. The code with the call-to-action has the strongest response. Would the others have improved with a CTA?
3. How many of these posters are in the wild? I only spotted one set, but I suspect there are more.

QR Codes are Scanned by Mobile Phones

Why would you point a QR code at a non-mobile site? And, just as bad, why not point directly to an app-store when you want people to download an app? Ah, it's because your advert's promise of an Android app is a lie. Very disappointing.

If you need a bespoke QR consultation, please contact Terence Eden

I'm still looking for a catchy name for it (suggestions welcomed) - so for now it's called "QR Generator PHP".

It's available on GitHub or you can use it directly.

So, how does it compare to Google Charts?

Usage

Usage is really simple.

To generate a QR code which says "hello": qr.php?d=hello (Click to see the QR code)

You can set the size with, oddly enough, the size parameter: qr.php?d=hello&size=1000 Size can be up to 1480 pixels.

You can set the image format to JPG or GIF. By default it outputs PNG. qr.php?d=hello&t=J

The Error Correction can be set to L, M, Q, or H. qr.php?d=hello&e=H

You can also tell the web browser to download the image - rather than just display it. The "download" parameter sets the filename for the image. qr.php?d=hello&t=g&download=testing The file will be called testing.gif (filetype is determined automatically)

Installation and configuration

Installing the software on your web server is easy. You need PHP4.1 or higher and gd 1.6 or higher. Those are fairly old versions, so any competent web host will have those.

There are three folders.

 |_php
 |_data
 |_image

DO NOT TOUCH THE CONTENTS OF THE data AND image FOLDERS.

Inside the php folder, you'll find the "qr.php" file.

There are only two things you need to configure - the location of the data and image folders

$path = "./../data"; // You must set path to data files.
$image_path = "./../image"; // You must set path to QRcode frame images.

By default, they're set up to be accessed without any modification. But, if you desperately want to move them to a different location, make sure you update qr.php.

Copyright

I've based my QR generator on that of Swetake. The original was licensed as "revised BSD" - I have kept the original licence.

Feedback

If you've got any feedback - either leave it in the comments here, or over at GitHub.

Dave! Dave! I've got a brilliant idea!

What is it, Fred?

Let's make a QR code... right... but make it really hard to scan!

Brilliant idea, Fred! How?

We can stick it on a Taxi, so that you have to wait until it stops at a traffic light before you can scan it!

Ok, Fred, but I'm still concerned that the code will be too easy to scan.

Aha! That's why we invert the colours!

Fred, you're a genius. Let's go and club some baby seals to death.

I... just.... WHAT?

Did no one test this campaign? It's completely unreadable on the half dozen QR scanners I tried. Perhaps there is a mythical phone which can render it, but I doubt it. The campaign (for an event in October 2011) had a total of fifteen clicks.

Of those clicks, only 10 were from the QR code. Ten!

I took the liberty of inverting the code back to the correct colour layout. Unsurprisingly for such a hopeless code, IPEXPO's website isn't mobile friendly.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bang my head against a brick wall.

If you need a professional QR code consultation - please contact me. PLEASE!

Today, I present to you three very different QR codes and their statistics. These are all taken from the Metro newspaper on Tuesday January 10th.

Wowcher

First up is "Wowcher", a big quarter page advert on page 28.

Wowcher's statistics show a consistently good performance with QR codes. Between 30 - 80 scans per day, and 87 yesterday.

Sparks

Next is a QR code for "Sparks Marathon" tucked away on page 50. Sad to say, Sparks' statistics are very poor. Just 16 scans. This is the first time this particular QR code has run. I wonder if its location (next to the TV listings, rather than by a news story) has something to do with its poor performance?

BlueSquare

Finally, on the bottom of page 63 is a QR code for BlueSquare's iPhone app. The BlueSquare statistics show a regular scan rate of 10 - 20 per day. Although yesterday they got 28.

Notes

It's hard to assess just how successful these codes are. The numbers are low, no doubt about that. As I mentioned in my interview for Econsultancy, a company needs to perform proper A|B testing to see how many calls, email, or website visits they would have got without a QR code.

• These were the only three QR codes in the Metro using bit.ly - so they are the only ones I can get statistics for.
• I have assumed that each code is unique to the paper it is printed in. That is, the same advert in the Guardian should have a different code.
• There are no handset statistics provided with bit.ly - unlike goo.gl.
• The statistics have been taken from the day after the adverts were published. The Metro tends to hang around on trains long after the morning rush.
• I have no connection with any of the companies shown here.

If you would like a bespoke QR consultation, contact me.