I guess most newspapers use the same CMS to add articles for their printed edition and their web edition. It's mostly ok - but when a journalist (or copy editor) creates content, they should always think about all the ways it can be displayed.

Even if they had inserted an image of The Attorney General in the website, there's no guarantee that it would be displayed to the right of the text. For example, on a mobile site it may be below.

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.

The Metro is a London-based UK newspaper national newspaper which is distributed in 33 cities across the UK. Around a year ago, I reviewed the Metro's mobile website. It wass a perfectly fine mobile site and I'm pleased to see that over the last 12 months it has undergone substantial improvements. You can visit it at http://metro.mobi/

This morning, I spotted this prominent QR code - placed on page 2 of the paper.

Photo by Benjamin Welby

So far, so good. There are a couple of flaws in the implementation which I'll come to. But first, the biggie.

Despite having a mobile site - guess what happens when you scan the QR code....?

Yes, that's right! Rather than pointing directly to metro.mobi, they're pointing to their main website metro.co.uk. Worse than that, the main website doesn't do any user-agent sniffing. Their front-end servers (or CDN) ought to detect mobile traffic and automatically redirect mobile devices to the mobile-friendly website.

Most phones will find the main site hard to navigate, flash adverts won't render, and the large data size will make downloading the page slow and potentially expensive.

Using Bit.ly

The main problem with this QR code is that it doesn't point to a mobile friendly site - but there are a few other gotchas.

Yes, you can use bit.ly to generate QR codes, but I wouldn't recommend it.

• Anyone - even your competitors - can see the statistics of your campaign. Visit http://bit.ly/gM06V2+ to see how many clicks the QR code has received. Where possible, you should use your own, private QR generating service.
• The short URLs are ugly! "gM06V2" is neither pretty nor memorable. Worse, a user typically has no idea what's behind that random string of characters and may be put off simply because they don't know where they will be sent. If you must use bit.ly - be sure to edit the code. For example, I've just created http://bit.ly/MetroMobile which looks nicer and points to the correct destination.
• What happens if the bit.ly services goes down? Your customers won't be able to access your services.
• What happens if Libya - the owners of .ly - decide to shut down bit.ly?
• Finally, do you need a URL shortner? http://metro.mobi is 17 characters, the URL used in Metro's QR code is http://bit.ly/gM06V2?r=qr - 25 characters!

I'm really pleased that the Metro is embracing QR codes. Much like the early days of URLs, we're bound to see a few mistakes - let's hope the kinks get straightened out before the public lose faith in these little magic squares.

Update

Just got this in from Martin Ashplant, the Head of Content at Metro.co.uk...

We are in the process of developing our offering so readers can choose whether they want to visit our website, which has richer content, or our mobile site. This choice will be available within a month.

We are comfortable with bit.ly for this particular campaign as it is our data and we are not concerned about it being public. However if we were to run such a campaign for a client we would of course make sure that the data remained private.