[.opening-paragraph]It’s one of those curious coincidences of history that, in the spring of 2020—just as the world was scrambling for new tools and techniques for touch-free communications—the long-neglected Quick Response code had just reached a tipping point where nearly every phone had built-in support for scanning them.[.tip-wrap][.tip-button][.tip-button][.tip-box][.tip-tri][.tip-tri][.tip-text]For more on the history of the QR code, this is a great read![.tip-text][.tip-box][.tip-wrap][.opening-paragraph]

It didn’t take long for the restaurant industry to train all of us to use these odd little squares to access their new digital menus. From there, the floodgates opened, and the devices started popping up everywhere. And so, a tool that many marketing and design professionals (including me) had seen as a dead technology was almost overnight elevated to the role of critical engagement tool.

Marketing professionals are still figuring out new applications and techniques for employing QR codes. And, when it comes to codes that contain a URL, there are two mistakes that I see over and over again:

  • Using a URL that is way too long, resulting in a cumbersome, hard-to-read image, and
  • Using a URL that you can’t redirect, if/when you have to.

Fortunately, both of these issues can be solved with one simple solution: a URL shortener service.

enhance the readability of your qr code

You’re probably aware of services like Bitly, TinyURL, and T.LY that allow you take a cumbersome, dynamically-generated URL like this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Rush+Creative/@32.7430719,-96.963595,9z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x8a894a083329bae5:0x399f27037d79e6a5!8m2!3d32.7430719!4d-96.963595!16s%2Fg%2F11y2mvccqw?entry=ttu ...and reduce it to something like this:https://t.ly/rvRt4

That brevity can be useful in all kinds of communications, but it’s especially powerful when used with QR codes. Consider the two codes below:

Both take the user to the exact same destination. The code on the left contains the 188 characters from the first URL, and the right-hand code contains the 19 characters of the shortened URL). The second QR code not only looks cleaner, but is much easier to print and scan, at any scale or distance.

The more data is stored within a QR code, the more “modules” (black and white squares) it must contain. In turn, the more modules it contains, the harder it is for your camera to scan. While current technology allows a standard QR code to hold up to 4,296 alphanumeric characters (or 3KB of data),[.tip-wrap][.tip-button][.tip-button][.tip-box][.tip-tri][.tip-tri][.tip-text]Technically, this is an approximation. Not all alphanumeric characters require the same amount of data, so (for instance), a string of numbers would take less space than the text of this article. Also, the exact capacity of a QR code is determined in part by its "erorr correction" settings. But most publicly available QR generators don't allow you to change these settings.[.tip-text][.tip-box][.tip-wrap] [.highlight-yellow]stuffing more data into a QR code increases its minimum print size and decreases it maximum viewing distance.[.highlight-yellow]

With the most common URL shortener services, there’s really no need for a QR code to contain more that 30 characters. At that length, the code can be printed as small as 1/2” tall on a brochure or business card. On signage or vehicle graphics, the same QR code printed at 12” tall could be recognized by a typical phone camera from as far as 100 feet away. [.tip-wrap][.tip-button][.tip-button][.tip-box][.tip-tri][.tip-tri][.tip-text]This is another approximation. The actual reading distance will be determined by a number of factors, not least of which are the color/contrast of the image, the lighting conditions, and the quality of the camera. But 1 foot hiehgt to 100 foot viewing distance is still a good rule of thumb.[.tip-text][.tip-box][.tip-wrap]

future-proof your qr code

Improving the print size and reading distance is great, but it’s not even the best part of pairing a URL shortener service with your QR codes. The real power comes in what these services generally refer to as “link management,” which is the ability to “redirect” your shortened URLs.

In other words, if you use a URL shortener service for the data in your QR codes, [.highlight-yellow]you can change the code’s destination AFTER it’s printed![.highlight-yellow]

If you’re wondering why this is important, consider this story:

[.narrative]Recently I had a new client come to me with their freshly-printed catalog that contained over a hundred QR codes that were intended to link products in the printed piece to a corresponding page on their web store. But almost as soon as the catalog was printed, the marketing department discovered that their IT department had decided to switch to a new e-commerce platform. (It should be noted that the previous service hosted the product pages on a third-party site, so after the contract was canceled, there was no way to redirect the URLs.) While the team had made arrangements for this in all their digital media, no one had considered the impact this would have on a printed catalog, which suddenly contained over a hundred broken links! [.narrative]

This mishap was not only tragic, but completely preventable. If the company had used a URL shortener service to generate their QR codes—instead of directly linking to every product page—it would be a simple matter to redirect the existing QR codes to new product pages.

For most services, this feature is only available with a paid subscription (starting under $10/month for any of the above). Basically, the process works like this (I’m using T.LY as an example, but all the services work in a similar fashion):

  1. Visit https://t.ly/register to create a trial account.
  2. Find and copy a URL that you want to send your audience to. (Or even a random URL if you don’t know yet. The whole idea is that the ultimate destination really doesn’t matter, at this point.)
  3. While logged into your account, visit https://t.ly/links and paste your URL into the field at the top of the  page, and click “shorten” to create a new shortened URL that can be managed on the T.LY platform.
  4. Generate a QR code straight from T.LY or copy the shortened URL to generate it from your app of choice. [.tip-wrap][.tip-button][.tip-button][.tip-box][.tip-tri][.tip-tri][.tip-text]Many  apps like Adobe InDesign, Figma, and even Microsoft Word have basic-level built-in QR generators. And there are plenty of online options like this one from Adobe. Each has various options for styling of the code, and some offer more advanced file formats, but the importnant thing is that the same data should produce the same code, regardless of where its created.[.tip-text][.tip-box][.tip-wrap]
  5. Print the code in your marketing materials. Your customers will be able to scan the QR code, it will first send them to a page on the T.LY site, and T.LY will then immediately forward them to the URL you have specified. Barring a connection issue, this relay happens too fast for the user to even notice.
  6. If you ever need to change the destination that your QR code sends your users to (for instance, if your coworkers change your website without telling you!), just hop onto the T.LY site and edit it.

This trick is sometimes referred to as a “dynamic QR code.” But I find this term a bit misleading, because the code itself never changes; nor does the data within it. [.highlight-yellow]But by using the shortened URL as an intermediary, you have the power to change your user’s ultimate destination, on demand.[.highlight-yellow]

Bottom line

To protect yourself from dead links, errors, and future curveballs, never generate a QR code using a direct link to your intended destination. Instead, use a URL shortener. The link you get from this service will ensure that (1) the generated image is as simple and readable as it can be, and (2) you can change the code’s destination later, if necessary.[.end-marker][.end-marker]

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