QR codes. By now, you’ve likely seen them. They look like a square with a lot of seemingly random black and white pixels. However, they’re pretty handy. And you can use them to both gather information from a survey respondent AND to let people take a survey. Let’s look at how to do both, then put it all together for a real-world scenario!
What is a QR Code?
A QR code is an an initialism for Quick Response code. It’s a trademark for a type of two-dimensional bar code. Bar codes have long been used to store information about items, but QR codes have moved one step beyond just storing information about an item and are now used to store URLs and other information. The bonus is that, rather than have a specific bar code reader, smartphones and mobile devices typically have a QR code reader as an app on the device, making it possible for anyone to capture a QR code. This makes it a very versatile type of bar code, with a wide range of applications. With QuestionPro, we have two primary ways to use a QR code – as a question type asking a respondent to scan a code, and as a way to store the URL of your survey so that respondents can scan the code and immediately be taken to the survey on their mobile device.
The QR Code Question
Adding a QR code question to your survey opens a whole lot of opportunities for you. It really is as easy as adding the question to your survey the same way you’d add any other question to your survey. But the kicker is that you can then use the QR code reader in conjunction with any existing QR codes to get information into the survey, saving the respondent time they’d otherwise spend typing out that information, or selecting it from drop-downs.
For example, let’s say you use QR codes instead of bar codes on your products, and you are conducting a survey to determine the utility of the products that consumers have purchased from you. As part of the survey, to help determine exactly what they’ve used, you can ask the respondent to snap the QR code on the product. Any information you’ve coded into that QR code (which could include batch number, retailer, color, size, and exact name of the product) is now captured in a text field in the survey responses.
The QR Code Link
You can also create a QR code for your survey. To create a QR code specific to your survey, you can either go to Send Survey and click Generate QR code (which can be saved as an image and then printed anywhere), or you can go to the Signs/Flyers button in Send Survey and customize business cards, table tents, postcards, and posters that all come ready with the QR code integrated into the design. You can also use your own QR code generator to point to the live URL for the survey. Remember that product survey? You could create a QR code that you print on the packaging that asks respondents to complete a survey about their experience purchasing the product, or how they intend to use the product, or whether the product is a new or repeat purchase.
Putting It All Together
It’s scenario time! Using QR codes and iBeacons, you can create one heck of an awesome experience for attendees of a convention while also gathering a lot of useful feedback for yourself!
First, the non-QuestionPro QR codes. These QR codes would be for the break-out sessions (containing information such as the name of the speaker, the location of the session, and the time and date of the session) and for the attendees (containing whether they were a single-day attendee or a multi-day attendee). Print the QR codes for the break-out sessions on session posters and on handouts given during each session; print the QR codes with attendee information on their badges. (Note: these are not QuestionPro QR codes, but codes that you can generate using one of many online QR-code generators).
Next, we go to QuestionPro and create our surveys. One asks about attendee’s experiences at any given break-out session; be sure to include two QR code questions in this survey – one to capture the break-out session QR code you generated earlier, and the other to capture the attendee QR code. The second survey would ask about their overall experience at the convention; this would also have a QR code question that asks the respondent to capture their attendee QR code on their badge. Once the surveys are ready to go, go to Send Survey and generate a QR code for each survey. Save that QR code and print it on the convention pamphlet, with clear labels for each survey.
Time for the iBeacons. Set up iBeacons in each location you will be hosting a break-out session, and one at each exit for the convention. These can be linked to an app you create for your convention.
Attendees now get this experience: they attend a break-out session. As they leave, their mobile device receives a notification inviting them to take a survey about the session they just attended from the iBeacon set up at the exit for the room. As they start to take the survey, one of the first questions requests that the attendee scan the QR code on the handout they received, and another asks them to scan the QR code on their badge. You’ve just saved your attendees a few minutes worth of entering that information into the survey themselves, letting them focus on the few questions about their experience. Finally, as they leave the convention, they receive one last invitation to take a survey about the convention, where, you guessed it, they are once again asked to scan the QR code on their badge.
And just in case the attendee didn’t download the app for the convention, or doesn’t have their phone set up to accept the invitation notifications, you have the QR code for the survey on the pamphlet, so they can always scan that and take the surveys on their mobile device when they have a moment.
Isn’t technology cool?
