Rating: Serious over -exaggerations of our time
Here we go … tenuous links to the London Olympics of our time. Matt Jones, co-founder of QRlicious writes, “As the political atmosphere heats up here in the USA and tensions grow during the heated competitions going on in the Olympics, we here at QRlicious felt it was the perfect time to address America’s QR Code Crisis. Jones then goes on to ask us to sign a petition. There’s no real petition and we’d hardly describe the situation as a ‘crisis’ but Jones has put all of GoMobile News’ gripes about the amateurish use of QR codes by marketers in one place. On the QRlicious web site.Takes this as an example. The company says,” The era when QR codes link to non-mobile sites, or links where no one can call to action – has got to end.”
QRlicisous then claims that when a QR code links to a desktop formatted (plain HTML) site, visitors leave within three minutes.Really, that long? More like sixty seconds we’d say.
GoMobile News wholeheartedly agreess with this sentiment …”The sole purpose why marketers use QR codes is to get people to call to action.” Exactly.
But what happens? “How do you expect them to call to action on a YouTube link or a non-mobile site?” the company asks.
What they really want is a mobile website with video, pics, coupons and links to other sites. ‘Signing the QRlicious petition’ seems to involve paying out $5 to create a mobile website. Nice ploy.
QRlicious’ four steps to solving the QR crisis are: -
1 Create a mobile website
2 Create a custom designed QR code
3 Track the scans of the QR Code
4 Print the QR code everywhere
Out of the four steps, the one which GoMobile News applauds most thoroughly is the creating a custom code step. The codes the company offers (employing colours just like Microsoft Tags) are a good idea.
We were also surprised at QRlicious’ choice of QR and barcode scanner software for Android which it has decided to promote: – i-nigma barcode from 3GVision; QR Pal from QR Pay; and Barcode Scanner from Zing Team.
No sign of the Neoreader or Scanlife. Curious.
Well, congrats to Mr Jones for suckering us into visiting his site. With any luck more marketers will pay attention to his complaints.
