QR Code Visitor Maps: What to Put on the Sign, the Letter and the Lanyard

QR codes went from embarrassing to everyday in about eighteen months, and visitors now scan them without thinking. That makes them the cheapest wayfinding you can install: a sticker on a sign, a square on a letter, a code on a lanyard, and the whole site is on the visitor's phone. The trick is in what the code opens and what you print next to it. These are the rules we have settled on building Signposted pages.

What the code should open

Not your website. Your website is for people who are not here yet. The code should open a page made for someone standing on your site right now: a map with directions, the practical places, and what is on today. It should load in a second on a poor signal, work without an app and without signing in, and remember what the visitor chose if they close it and scan again later. If the page knows where the visitor scanned (a code at the sports hall can open the page on the sports hall), better still.

What to print beside it

A code on its own is a puzzle. Print three things with it: what it does ("Scan for the site map and directions"), what it costs ("No app, no sign-up"), and the short address for anyone who would rather type ("visit.360virtualtours.co.uk/ridgeway"). The address matters more than you think: it is what people read out to each other, and it is the fallback when the code is scratched or the sun is on it.

Where to put it

• The letter or email. The highest-value placement. The visitor opens it at home, plans the journey, and arrives knowing where to park. Use a link in email and a code in print.
• The car park and the gate. At eye level on the way in, where signal is usually best and the question "where now?" is loudest.
• Reception. On the desk and on the lanyard or badge, so a visitor who signs in can navigate alone for the rest of the day.
• Every building entrance. One code per door, opening the page on that building: the "you are here" of the phone age.
• Tickets, wristbands and programmes. For events, the only sign that goes everywhere the visitor goes.

The mistakes

Codes printed too small (under 2cm is a gamble), codes on glass behind reflections, codes at knee height, codes that open a PDF, codes that open a page that then asks for cookies, codes that go to a URL shortener someone forgot to renew. The quiet one is the code that opens a page nobody updates, so the first thing the visitor sees is last year's open day.

Measuring it

Add a ?src= parameter to the address behind each code (gate, reception, letter, lanyard) and your analytics will tell you which placements people use and which you can stop printing. A Signposted page passes those straight through to your own Google Analytics, along with place opens, trail starts and enquiries, so you learn what visitors actually look for on your site. Which is, in the end, the point of the exercise.