How do QR code tracking and analytics work?

QR code tracking lets you collect real-time in­form­a­tion about the status of your QR codes. This includes location, total number of scans, demo­graph­ic data, and scanning device in­form­a­tion. Collected metrics and stat­ist­ics can help you optimise your marketing campaigns and achieve business goals.

Nowadays, many products, deals, and ad spaces include QR codes. With up to 2,500 char­ac­ters, these codes can contain a wide variety of in­form­a­tion, including the following:

• Text
• Payments (QR code payment)
• Audio and video files
• Tickets and cer­ti­fic­ates
• Ad­vert­ising
• URLs
• In­form­a­tion
• Pro­mo­tion­al in­form­a­tion
• Contact in­form­a­tion
• Augmented reality in­teg­ra­tion

Companies that know where, when and how often people scan their QR code have a clear com­pet­it­ive advantage. Knowing whether customers read a QR code on a PC or scan a QR code with their smart­phone is important in­form­a­tion. Unlike OCR software, QR codes not only integrate diverse content, but also collect important data. For example, you can use demo­graph­ic, geo­graph­ic, and tech­no­lo­gic­al metrics to create analyses of pur­chas­ing, search, and user behaviour. You can also use QR code tracking to ef­fect­ively optimise marketing and ad­vert­ising strategies and tap into un­re­cog­nised growth op­por­tun­it­ies.

Not all QR codes offer tracking tech­no­logy. That’s why it’s important to first un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence between static and dynamic QR codes.

A static QR code offers many ad­vant­ages but isn’t suitable for QR code tracking. As a rule, a static QR code contains a URL that provides a direct link to the target. That’s why the content of the QR code can neither be edited nor converted into a dynamic QR code at a later point in time.

Still, static QR codes have some ad­vant­ages:

• No ex­pir­a­tion date: as long as the URL contained in the QR code is online, the QR code will remain active.
• Unlimited scanning: as long as the URL exists and the server processes the requests, scanning is unlimited and without re­stric­tion.
• Offline reading: if the QR code contains text, event in­form­a­tion, contact data, or other data that can be read without a URL, you don’t need an internet con­nec­tion to scan it.
• Direct URL re­dir­ec­tion: when the QR code is scanned, the URL doesn’t require re­dir­ec­tion and can be im­me­di­ately accessed, provided it’s still online.

QR code tracking requires a dynamic QR code. This option has the following ad­vant­ages:

• Change content and target addresses later: a dynamic QR code can be changed during an ongoing ad­vert­ising campaign. If it contains a typo, content error or an incorrect URL, you can make the necessary changes to ensure accuracy.
• Privacy-compliant user stat­ist­ics: campaign success can be measured through real-time data col­lec­tion. By scanning a QR code, you get important in­form­a­tion about users and target audiences based on the IP address, device used, operating system, and location.
• Limited or date-based ad­vert­ising campaigns: QR code content can be limited or activated at a specific time. For example, you can initially point to a test or countdown page and then forward to the target URL when the ad­vert­ising campaign starts.
• Search for expired URLs: dynamic QR code and QR code tracking providers usually check whether the codes still redirect to the correct URL or to an error 404 dead link.
• Smaller code size: compared to static QR codes, dynamic QRs are sig­ni­fic­antly smaller because a URL shortener is used to create them. Fewer char­ac­ters are embedded in the code, allowing them to use less ad­vert­ising space than their static coun­ter­parts.

Only dynamic QR codes are suitable for real-time QR code tracking. While static QR codes forward you to a target URL without tracking anything, dynamic QR codes use short URLs or tracking URLs. In other words, you’re re­dir­ec­ted via the tracking URL. By doing this, important metrics can be collected to measure success and optimise marketing campaigns and business goals.

Make sure to only use providers that don’t display ads or banners while re­dir­ect­ing. Ideally, you should pick a QR code provider with trans­par­ent rates and no adverts. You should also have the pos­sib­il­ity to generate or export QR codes.

Similar to how real-time tracking, data col­lec­tion and data analytics can lead to greater ef­fi­ciency, security, and flex­ib­il­ity for logistics and shipping, QR code tracking also offers many benefits:

• Improve marketing strategies through real-time data and per­form­ance analysis
• Increase brand en­gage­ment and optimise your brand building efforts through user in­ter­ac­tion
• Adapt QR code content later if changes need to be made
• Collect key metrics such as the location and time of scan, scanning device, operating system, and total number of scans to create mean­ing­ful in­fograph­ics
• Narrow down and identify your target groups and top sales locations
• Link to Google Analytics to enable automatic data and per­form­ance reporting
• Determine return on in­vest­ment (ROI) in real time

Key metrics and stat­ist­ics obtained from QR code tracking include:

• Total number of scans: determine how many times the QR code has been scanned over a given time (days, weeks, months). Duplicate scans can be included or excluded. This in­form­a­tion lets you determine the ideal location, target group, and times for campaigns and sales.
• Geo­graph­ic location of the scan: when the QR code is scanned, the user’s IP address is resolved. This lets you see which regions, cities and countries your campaigns are best received in and where you generate the highest ROI.
• Time of scans: checking the time of day of scans can help measure success rates and per­form­ance reports.
• Device and operating system used: scans also collect in­form­a­tion about the device and operating system (Android or iOS) of the IP address. This lets you focus on a specific device or operating system.
• Number of unique scans: unique scans represent specific devices (for example, an iOS device) that scan the QR code at a specific time, in a specific location. This helps you dis­tin­guish between total scans (including duplicate scans) and unique scans.

To improve con­ver­sions and measure the success of campaigns, companies are in­creas­ingly using AB testing. This involves two or more parallel marketing and ad­vert­ising strategies. The results allow you to directly compare different strategies and help measure the re­spect­ive success of each strategy with different target markets. You can do this with QR code tracking by using QR codes with slightly modified content, products, call-to-actions, designs and colours, or different URLs. Tracking and data meas­ure­ment provides real-time per­form­ance analysis of parallel campaigns.

If you use Google Ads and Google Analytics in com­bin­a­tion with QR code tracking, you’ll get important metrics and reports straight to your Google Analytics account. You can do this by linking the QR code’s target URL to your Google account, where you can collect tracking data via set cookies. When users access the online store or product page, you’ll start col­lect­ing data.

Besides QR code tracking with Google Analytics or QR tracking providers, these tools are also great solutions:

• Adobe Analytics
• Matomo
• Etracker
• Mapp
• Econda
• Countly
• Piwik Pro

Here are some of the most important forms of tracking that are used in con­junc­tion with pre­defined KPIs:

QR code tracking lets you collect important in­form­a­tion and per­form­ance reports on user behaviour and sales in specific regions or amongst specific target groups. When used for an extended time, collected data offers numerous op­por­tun­it­ies to optimise ad­vert­ising campaigns, sales strategies and business processes. With a wealth of data to learn from, busi­nesses can better equip them­selves to achieve their business goals.