When a Web Developer tells the public that “we create QR Codes,” they are devaluing their real service. The actual service, when done correctly, is user-friendly mobile experiences.
In other words, designing and building websites that are intended to be displayed on any internet capable phone, also known as, smart phones. If you have ever tried to view a traditional website, one that is designed for a 19″ monitor on a 3.5″ smart phone screen, no doubt you were disappointed in the lack of usability.
That single poor experience was caused by several factors:
1) Traditional websites are heavy – because they contain a lot of information that has to be downloaded before being displayed. That is a lot of information being transmitted over your 3G network which, depending on your exact location, the signal strength may vary.
2) Incorrect coding language – most websites today are developed in WordPress, and plug-ins are available to allow traditional websites to be displayed mobile. These plug-ins work by stripping out unnecessary code; the down side is, they also strip out all the style. Currently, the best mobile friendly language is JQuery, (we’ll write a separate post about JQuery in a few weeks)
3) If plug-ins are not installed on your website, possibly because that isn’t an option, then the resolution and clarity of the content will naturally shrink. It stands to reason that content intended to be displayed on a large screen will have to be compressed to be viewed on a small hand held device. If you haven’t, I’m sure you’ve seen your friends, using two fingers, zoom in to enlarge a portion of the screen, then swipe in a direction, up, down, left and right. While waiting for the screen to slowly populate, they loose their place on the page as well as their patience. Is this the experience you want…and more importantly, this how you want your visitors to interact with your content?
In short, more and more people every day are accessing the internet through their smart
phones and they are doing this one of three possible ways.
1) They manually type in the address, example: TodaysQR.com
2) They click on a link a friend has socially shared with them
3) They take the easy route and scan a QR Code that directs them to an exact advertised location enabling the user to feed their interest. But what experience will they get? One that is user-friendly, allows them to self-educate on their timeline as well as socially share content they find valuable, or not. The difference is the experience!
Click here to check out these innovative ways to use QR codes.
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[...] bridging the gap between general interest and specific information. When a use scans a QR code from our partners at TodaysQR.com, they are directed to a user-friendly mobile website allowing [...]