Static vs Dynamic
What is a Static QR Code?
A static QR code has many uses but once encoded and printed to role it plays does not change. A static QR code that encodes the yahoo.com url will always point its users to yahoo.com. To point to google.com a new Static QR code must be created with a different printed pattern, replacing the old one.
What is a Dynamic QR Code?
A Dynamic QR Code is a standard QR code with a short url redirect encoded into it. The idea is quite simple. The short url never changes while the final url can be changed at will. The QR code image remains the same and can be repeated an infinite amount of times. This has huge advantages over Static QR codes as they require re-printing when a new url is used. Using the urls of search engines as an example a Dynamic url that points to yahoo.com can later be changed to point to google.com or any other webpage.
Uses of Dynamic QR Codes
Dynamic QR codes are useful for restaurant menus, online and seasonal marketing campaigns and are ideal for tracking analytics data such as, hits, device, time and location. Best of all they are able to be reused for multiple purposes saving on printing and graphic design costs.
How can QR Codes be tracked using Analytics?
Dynamic QR codes can be tracked relatively easily using Analytics. This is done by adding a query string to the target url.
yourwebsite.com/may-sales-event?HJPD2S
The characters “HJPD2S” after the ? is the query string. These characters are used to single out campaign visits from regular website traffic. New Media Campaigns have an excellent in depth article on how to set up query strings for landing pages. See how to use query strings