Have you noticed that QR codes are making a comeback? It’s actually pretty impressive if you start to look for QR codes. If you pay attention you will notice QR codes everywhere. Especially now that we are all dealing with the new world of COVID-19, many businesses are turning to QR to provide touchless information using your smartphone camera and scanning a QR code. If you didn’t know, both iPhones and Androids scan QR codes natively with the camera.
I ran across this article recently, that explains how PayPal is using QR codes for touch free payments.
Also I’ve noticed that LinkedIn, Amazon, Venmo, What’s App, and many other popular apps are integrating QR codes to exchange information and provide information to consumers. You also may not realize it, but you’ve been using QR codes to check into your airplane flight, movies, and events for years.
As a winery or a distillery, why not provide more information to your users beyond the label? BottleVin started started with NFC 2 years ago. Since our first NFC support, we’ve added QR, UPC/Barcode, and Label Recognition. As NFC has the cost of the chip, the other scan technologies have no associated cost with them and in the last year I’ve been recommending QR codes when asked by someone interested in our platform.
A close friend Steve Reynolds of Reynolds Family Winery, who is very forward thinking asked me earlier this year, “Paul, should we keep using NFC or do something else?”. I told Steve that I see QR codes coming back, so we converted his whole line to QR code this year, with 1 exception, his Reserve Cab, which still uses NFC, which is still way more elegant and pretty cool to tap the bottle.
I’ve been looking at a lot of QR codes being used in society. Some are doing it right and some are doing it wrong. You need to be conscious about the actual QR code URL you put on your product. Many wineries and products I see just adding QR codes to point to their website URL. This really isn’t valuable, since your consumers still need to go through your site looking for thei information.
If you do QR right you can create a “unique” QR codes that are reusable and provides meaningful data to your business. The scan will take you right to the product info you want to display. An advantage of adding adding a unique QR code is that you can use it for post-sales information, product information, and promotions and it’s a great tool to provide your customers with engaging content or deals!
During the pandemic BottleVin has had some opportunities to create some proof of concept ideas using the platform with QR code. We created demos for PPE products, Coffee, and Cosmetics which shows that QR codes is relevant in all retail products. As BottleVin is focused on the wine and spirit industry and we provide some rich data for the producers, it’s obvious to me that QR is coming back with a vengeance, especially now with the pandemic.
QR is happening now, so make your produce ready for the next generation of retail! Check out some examples below.
Thanks for reading!
-Paul
QR Examples
