Take a quick look around you the next time you're out and about in your city. If you're sitting in a cafe, if you're standing in a queue at the supermarket, or if you're just walking down a busy street, you are almost guaranteed to see them. Those little, square, black-and-white, and slightly mysterious-looking patterns. They are, of course, QR codes.
They have, in a very short amount of time, become a completely and totally ubiquitous and an almost invisible part of our modern, daily lives. We use them for absolutely everything. Here in Colombo, we use them for making quick and easy, cashless payments with the LANKAQR system. We use them to be able to instantly view a restaurant's menu. And we use them to be able to get the password for the local Wi-Fi network. They are the magical, digital bridges that seamlessly connect our physical, real world to the online one.
Now, we have all become absolute experts at scanning them. We all know the familiar, little dance: you pull out your smartphone, you open up your camera app, and you point it at the code. But have you ever stopped to wonder how to make your own? Do you need to be some kind of a professional graphic designer or a brilliant, coding wizard to be able to create one? The answer is a resounding and a very happy no. Creating your own, custom QR code for your website, for your Wi-Fi network, or for your business card is incredibly simple, it is completely free, and it is something that you can do in about thirty seconds, with an easy-to-use, online tool.
Before we get into the fun and the creative part of making our own codes, let's just do a super-quick refresher on what this magical, little square actually is. The "QR" in its name stands for "Quick Response," and that is exactly what it was designed and invented for.
It's a little bit like a normal barcode on steroids. A traditional, one-dimensional barcode, the kind that you see on all the products at the supermarket, is only able to hold a very small amount of information, which is usually just a string of numbers. But a QR code is two-dimensional. This means that it can store information both horizontally and vertically. This simple but incredibly brilliant, design choice means that a single, small QR code can hold thousands of times more data than a traditional barcode. And it is this ability to be able to hold a huge amount of data that is what makes it so incredibly versatile. It's not just for numbers; it can hold website links, it can hold plain text, it can hold contact information, and so much more.
So, what kind of amazing and useful information can you actually pack into one of these clever, little squares? While most of us probably think of them as just a fancy and a convenient way to be able to store a website link, they can actually be used for a huge and a diverse variety of different and of very useful things.
The most common use, of course, is to store a Website URL. This is the one that we all know and love. You can use it to instantly direct people to your company's website, to your personal, social media profile, or to a specific product page in your online store. But you can also use it to store simple, plain text. This could be a secret message, a famous quote, or a set of simple instructions.
One of the most useful and the most brilliant applications is for your Wi-Fi Network. This is a fantastic and a very hospitable trick for cafes, for offices, or even just for your own home. You can create a QR code that contains both your Wi-Fi network's name and its password. Your guests can then just scan that one, single code to be able to connect instantly, without ever having to go through the awkward and the error-prone process of manually typing in a long and a complicated password. You can also use it to create a vCard, which is a digital business card. A QR code can hold your name, your phone number, your email address, and your website. When a person scans it, they will instantly have the option to be able to save you as a new contact in their phone.
So, now that we know what they can do, why should we be using them? The simple answer is that they are one of the most powerful and the most effective tools that we have for bridging the gap between the offline and the online worlds. This is their true and their core benefit.
You can put a QR code on any kind of a physical object it could be on your product's packaging, it could be on a poster for an event, it could be on the back of your business card, or it could even be on a t-shirt and you can use it to instantly connect that physical object to a rich and a dynamic, digital experience.
They are also incredibly convenient for the user. They completely remove all of the friction from the process. Your customers no longer have to try and manually type in your long and your complicated website address. They can just point, scan, and they are there. And in our modern, post-pandemic world, the use of QR codes for things like restaurant menus and for payments has become a new and an important, hygienic standard.
It's actually pretty interesting to think about the fact that, for a very long time, there really was no good and no easy way to be able to bridge this physical-to-digital divide.
Before the widespread adoption of smartphones and of QR codes, your only real option was to print your full, and often very long, website URL on your poster or on your flyer. You would then have to just hope and pray that a potential customer would take the time and the effort to be able to manually and painstakingly type that entire address into their phone's web browser. And let’s be honest with ourselves, almost no one ever, ever did that. The QR code was the first, truly effective, elegant, and user-friendly solution to this very common and very important problem.
This pressing need for a fast, for a simple, and for a completely code-free way to be able to create these powerful and these magical, digital bridges is exactly why a QR Code Generator is such an absolutely essential and an invaluable tool for any modern marketer or for any business owner.
This type of tool is a simple, web-based utility that does all of the complex and the clever, data encoding work for you. The workflow is an absolute dream of simplicity. You just go to the website. You will first select the type of data that you want to be able to encode in your new QR code. For example, you might choose "URL," "Text," or "Wi-Fi." You will then just have to fill in a very simple form with all of your information. The tool will then, instantly and in real-time, generate the unique and the beautiful QR code image for you, which you can then download and use wherever you want. And the fantastic thing is, with the kind of powerful and user-friendly tools you can find on toolseel.com, you can go from a simple idea to a downloadable and a ready-to-use QR code in less than one minute.
As you begin to explore these wonderfully simple and useful tools, you'll find that the best and most feature-rich ones are designed to give you a huge amount of creative control over your final QR code. A really top-notch online tool for generating your QR codes should have a few key features. It should include:
A tool with these features is an invaluable asset for any modern business.
Now for the golden rule, the single most important and the absolutely non-negotiable step in this entire process. The online tool will generate a perfect and a beautiful code for you. But you are the human who is about to go and to print that code on five thousand, different flyers for your big event.
Before you ever, ever send your new QR code to the professional printer, or before you publish it on your website, you must always, always, always test it with your own phone. And you should try to test it with a couple of different phones if you can. Scan it. Ask yourself the simple questions. Does it actually work? Does it take you to the correct and the typo-free URL? Is the Wi-Fi password that you have encoded correct? This simple, five-second test is the crucial and the final step that can save you from the massive, the costly, and the incredibly public embarrassment of printing thousands and thousands of broken and non-functional QR codes.
Let’s be honest, QR codes are a powerful, a versatile, and an absolutely essential tool for modern communication and for modern marketing. And you do not need to be a technical expert or a graphic designer to be able to create them. A simple, an easy-to-use, and a powerful online generator has made this entire process fast, easy, and completely accessible to absolutely everyone.
The world is absolutely full of new and of exciting opportunities for you to be able to connect with your audience. Don't ever let the gap between the physical and the digital world stand in your way. By using a simple online tool to be able to create your own, custom QR codes, you can build seamless and beautiful bridges for your customers, you can make their lives so much more convenient, and you can share your important message in a fun and an interactive way. So, what will you link to first?