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Advertising ⊚ Branding ⊚ Communications
Decoding QR Codes: How To Format Data for QR Code Generators
Without question, QR codes play an important role in the current advertising and marketing environment. In fact, a recent smartphone user study conducted by Baltimore’s MGH uncovered several interesting QR code statistics. Among those statistics, we learned that 72% of smartphone users are more likely to recall an advertisement with a QR code. This tells us that QR codes, at least for now, get the attention of consumers and get a lot of use.
If so many consumers recognize and use QR codes, it is time to employ standard practices for QR codes. Generators may use several different methods to encode, or store data in a QR code. Some of these encoding methods are more standardized than others. We researched Google’s standard format suggestions and have provided a simplified version of that list in this post. We arranged the list by data type (i.e. URL, email address, telephone number, contact information, SMS, MMS, location data and more).
If you’re attaching the following data type to a QR code, you should encode the data using the corresponding data format:
| Data Type | Data Format |
| Website URL | http://www.websitename.com (include the “http://” so it recognizes the data as a website URL) |
| Pre-populated email address | mailto:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (include “mailto” so it recognizes the data as an email address) |
| Pre-Populated Telephone Number | +16365553344 (URI should include the country code to support users outside the country of origin) |
| Contact Information | LastName,FirstName;ADR:(insert address), (second address line), City, ST (Insert 5-digit zip code);TEL:+16365553344;EMAIL:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.;;
DO NOT use parenthesis or line breaks in code. *For QR Codes, the MECARD standard format shown above is more standard than vCard standard format |
| Pre-populated SMS Message | sms:number:subject |
| Pre-populated MMS Message | mms:number:subject |
| Map or Location Coordinates | latitude, longitude, altitude in meters (a minus sign denotes a South latitude and a West longitude)
code for Google offices: 40.71872,-73.98905, 100 |
| Android Market URI for Android Devices | For a QR code you must replace all punctuation with code. For example,
market://search?q=pub:”Search Query” becomes: market://search?q=pub%3A%22Search%20Query%22 |
| YouTube Video | youtube://ID (may work on iPhone, untested, unreleased, not standardized) |
| iCal Appointment | BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Test Meeting DTSTART:20110713T190000Z DTEND:20110713T200000Z END:VEVENT (untested, unreleased, not standardized) |
Users respond more favorably to QR codes that scan allowing a preview of the final destination. For example, the user views the URL before going directly to the website. Or the telephone URI code prompts the user to hit dial instead of automatically dialing for them. If you select a generator, develop a generator or develop a bar code scanner, incorporate these standard usability features.