Why Use QR Codes in Electronic Documents?
By Joe Barber, Chief QR Officer at the CodeZQR division of Computer Output Print & Internet (COPI)
Almost every company I talk with is trying to move some portion of their one to one communications to electronic delivery. In these conversations I often get asked, “How can we use a QR Code in an electronic document?” Because electronic documents are usually viewed on a PC hyperlinks can deliver people from the document to the web. However, there are still many reasons to use QR Codes in these electronic documents and today I would like to highlight two.
The first reason is that a lot of electronically presented documents are still printed out by the recipient. Once that document is printed it is no different than if you had printed it and mailed it yourself. Therefore all of the reasons we have discussed for bringing recipient interactivity to a printed document apply.
In the case of electronically distributed newsletters this is very common. I print these out all the time and take them with me to read when I arrive at a client appointment a few minutes early or I have a few free minutes for some other reason. This is how I get a fair amount of my reading done. In these situations I always have my QR Code Scanner (aka my cell phone) within arms reach if I want to react to or interact with a promotion or message that has a QR Code in it.
The second reason for including QR Codes in an electronic document is to allow people to easily transfer the URL links from their PC to their mobile phone. Electronic documents that look good on a PC often don’t render well on a mobile device and so reading an eNewsletter on a mobile device can be a real challenge.
When I am reading an electronic newsletter on my PC and I see a link to an article that I would like to read later at home or some other more convenient time I like to upload that link to my cell phone. That way I can check it out at a more convenient time.
Today this is a very cumbersome task as I have to click on the link and launch my PC web browser and save that link to my mobile favorites. This also leads to a lot of maintenance on my mobile favorites list to clear out old items.
If the publisher used a QR Code in their electronic document I could simply scan the QR code on my computer screen and launch the website directly in my mobile browser. Now the URL is saved in the browser history of my cell phone and I can access it at a later time. And the cell phone will take care of cleaning out the browser history at its scheduled time.
The uses for QR Codes within electronic documents are practically limitless just like the uses for the codes in printed documents. If you have any ideas please send them to me at jb@CodeZQR.com as I would love to hear them and work them into a future post.
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