How to Track the Success of a QR Code

As someone who’s had to type a long web address into a smart phone, I’m a big fan of using a QR code as a short cut. So if you’re the business owner, how do you track the usage of the QR codes you generate? By creating specific “dummy” URLs that can specify the source, medium and advertising campaign. You then use Google Analytics (or another web traffic tool) to see how traffic was driven to each URL.

Create a “dummy address” for your campaign

Notice that you can be pretty specific when creating the new URL.

1. Use the Google URL Builder – http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
2. Fill in each of the required (*) fields, for a unique web address
3. Click “Generate URL”
4. This gives you something like
   “http://www.YourWebSite.com/?utm_source=QR&utm_medium=MarchNewsletter&utm_campaign=NewCampaign”
   (Notice that your “source” is a QR code, “medium” is the March newsletter and the “campaign” is “NewCampaign”)
5. Highlight and copy your new link

Create Your QR Code

1. Shorten the link using either http://goo.gl/ or https://bitly.com/
2. Copy your new, shortened link
3. Use http://createqrcode.appspot.com/ or your favorite QR code generator to create your code.

Monitor in Your Web Tracking Software

I’m a big fan of Google Analytics, but whatever tool you use, look into your page visits to see which pages got the most hits and which did not. From there, it’s a matter of tweaking your marketing campaign.

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