Comments on: Barcode Posters – the second coming

By: Pez

Pez — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:55:33 +0000

@Sharon/Adrian Wouldn’t generating separate bit.ly URLs and using the stats reporting there be a quick win?

Obviously you’d have to match URLs with sites, but it would mean no server-side fiddling if you’ve got no internal technical resource?

By: Pez

Pez — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:50:34 +0000

@Andy I wholeheartedly agree with you, but I do think (as John says) that some education is needed first.

I don’t think space is going to allow us to put an explaination on the Rayemyplace posters, but when we start putting them on things like planning notices (which I’m hoping we will), we’ll be trying to school people in the joys of QR codes.

By: Adrian Short

Adrian Short — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:02:00 +0000

Sharon,

The Google Chart API will always return the same barcode for the same URL, but there’s nothing to stop you feeding it bit.ly URLs or anything else you can contrive.

For example, you might want to encode:

http://www.mycouncil.gov.uk/page?id=123&site=central-library

although doing something like that would probably break your general web stats as it would treat each site as a separate page.

I suppose you could create a little forwarding app that took a URL like this (which would be in the barcode):

http://www.mycouncil.gov.uk/poster?url=http://www.mycouncil.gov.uk/page?id=123&site=central-library

that then logged a hit for that page at that site in its own stats database and then redirected to http://www.mycouncil.gov.uk/page?id=123

There is definitely potential to key hits from these posters/barcodes either per site or simply to record that the hit came from a barcode/poster.

By: Sharon O'Dea

Sharon O'Dea — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:26:41 +0000

Smashing idea, Stuart.

One question: does the Google barcode generator produce a unique barcode each time, or (like bit.ly) a barcode for each URL which is repeated each time it’s entered?

If the former, it could enable the organisations that use them to monitor the effectiveness of printed materials – by using different barcodes at each site you can monitor which poster sites produce more traffic/take up.

In turn that should help communicators to focus their outdoor advertising on those places where it’s most effective.

By: Andrew Beeken

Andrew Beeken — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:57:12 +0000

Oh you top man! I’d wondered where you generate those funkeh barcodes from I have a project that could very well make use of this…

By: Adrian Short

Adrian Short — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:39:40 +0000

Good idea to use barcodes for this. Every printed URL whether on a document or a poster is a potential candidate for a barcode. And like URLs themselves were not so long ago, the more people see the more they will learn to use them. I recommend using a URL shortener like http://bit.ly which makes the barcodes simpler and therefore easier to scan.

By: Tony Piper

Tony Piper — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:51:33 +0000

Just a sideways thought – it would be great to show the year of inspection in large bold type… to prevent dodgy restaurants from showing their old more favourable certs…

By: Tony Piper

Tony Piper — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:43:02 +0000

Can you also do this with planning notices too? That would be great!

By: Tony Piper

Tony Piper — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:40:35 +0000

Stuart, you are amazing. I had no idea that Google had a QR-generating API. I suggest you include a ratemyplace.org.uk/ here which gives information about specific premises and also explains how to read QR codes on the move. Looking forward to that urban spoon tie-in too! ;O

By: John Fox

John Fox — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:23:30 +0000

That’s a great idea, I really like it and can see all sorts of applications for it, particularly in a local authority context.

In the early days of its usage, however, you would have to include more than just the barcode. In order to promote take-up (internally) and take-up (externally), there would need to be some form of explanation of the purpose of the ‘funny graphic’ including what types of device can scan it and why they should (the benefit).

You might, for example, do something like this:

[BARCODE IMAGE] What’s this? Visit http://www.xyz.gov.uk/barcode to find how to access this information from a portable device.