Using QR codes can be very beneficial for your business. If used right, they contribute to increased conversion rates. To fully get the impact of QR codes on your business, it's essential you implement tracking to assess their effectiveness.
In this blog, we'll dive into how you can set this up with Simple Analytics. We use Simple Analytics instead of Google Analytics since it's way easier to use. GA4 is an overly complex and bloated analytics tool that makes it difficult to set up tracking.
- Why is tracking QR codes important
- How does Simple Analytics track QR codes?
- How to set up QR code tracking
- Final Thoughts
Why is tracking QR codes important
Here are some of the reasons why QR code tracking is important
- QR codes collect data and provide valuable insights and reports on user behaviour and sales in specific locations or target groups. This ultimately improves your advertising and sales strategies.
- By tracking the number of scans and conversions, you can better evaluate which marketing campaigns are effective and which require improvements.
- With QR code tracking, you get insights on the
- location of the scan
- total number of scans
- type of operating system used
- number of scans based on the month, week, day, and hour
- number of unique scans made.
- You can also** identify patterns and trends** in customer behaviour to craft more personalised and meaningful relationships with customers.
- Using QR codes to track customer behaviour, you can optimise marketing spending and make informed campaign decisions, resulting in a higher return on investment.
How does Simple Analytics track QR codes?
Simple Analytics is a simple web analytics tool that can track metrics related to your website traffic.
Once you add the Simple Analytics script to your website, it starts collecting important data points related to your visitors' interactions. These metrics include where your visitors are coming from, which pages they visit and whether they convert into customers.
For a complete list of tracked metrics, you can refer to the documentation page.
To track QR codes effectively, Simple Analytics uses the UTM source. This helps identify the origin of your traffic and provides valuable data about where your organic visitors are coming from.
How to set up QR code tracking
Let's walk through the steps to set it up for your website:
Install the Script
If you haven't already added the Simple Analytics script to your website, follow these instructions:
- Locate the <body> tag in your website's HTML code.
- Copy and paste the following script inside the <body> tag:
<!-- 100% privacy-first analytics -->
<script async defer src="<https://scripts.simpleanalyticscdn.com/latest.js>"></script>
<noscript><img src="<https://queue.simpleanalyticscdn.com/noscript.gif>" alt="" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /></noscript>
This script enables Simple Analytics to start tracking page views on your website.
Add UTM Source to QR code URL
After you've installed the Simple Analytics script, you'll need to add UTM source to the URL to make it easily identifiable. Use our free UTM generator to create your link.
Here's how your URL should look.
<https://yourwebsite.com/?utm_source=qr_code>
Set Up a Goal for QR code tracking
Now that you have some traffic flowing into your website, it's time to create a goal to track organic traffic sources such as Google, Bing, Twitter, and others. Follow these steps to set up the goal:
- Log in to your Simple Analytics dashboard.
- Navigate to the “Goals” section.
- Click on “Create Goal” or “Add New Goal.”
- Give your goal a descriptive name, like “Traffic from QR code.”
- Choose the “pageview” event from the list of available events.
- Under the filter options, select “UTM source – is – qr_code” to track traffic specifically from the QR code link generated.
- Save the Goal.
Once you've set up the Goal, consider marking it as “important” to have it appear on your visitor dashboard for easy monitoring.
Final Thoughts
QR code tracking provides valuable information that can be used to improve marketing plans and budgets.
With the help of tools like Simple Analytics, you can effortlessly track QR codes and get insightful data about your customers, allowing you to grow your business substantially.
Simple Analytics is a privacy-friendly and simple analytics tool that is 10x easier to use than GA4. Want to see what that looks like? Check our publich dashboard here