QR code click-through statistics
QR code is a two-dimensional barcode that can encode any information, such as product details, random text, or a website page URL. A user scans the QR code with a mobile phone camera and thus navigates to the website.
There are special services for generating QR codes, such as the Yandex QR code generator.
QR codes can exist both electronically and on paper or other physical media. Yandex Metrica allows you to track click-throughs to your website from different QR code-bearing media.
How Yandex Metrica identifies a QR code as a source
If you use the Yandex QR code generator, a special tag (yqrid) is automatically added to the link. It lets Yandex Metrica determine that the user has reached the site via a QR code. The tag is dynamically generated each time a code is created. You don’t have to add any additional parameters to the link.
You can see the click-through statistics for a QR code generated in the Yandex QR code generator in the Sources, summary report.
If you generate a QR code in another way, you have to add a UTM tag to the page URL.
For tracking via a UTM tag, you have to use the utm_medium parameter. Recommended values for this parameter when using a QR code: qr or qrcode. To let Yandex Metrica distinguish click-throughs from different QR code-bearing media, use the following parameters: utm_campaign (campaign name) and utm_content (campaign content).
Here’s an example: we have to generate a QR code from a link to a page with information about bonuses and place it on an ad in the subway. The link might look like this:
https://example.com/?utm_medium=qrcode&utm_campaign=metro&utm_content=bonus
For more information, see How Yandex Metrica detects the traffic source.
You can see the click-through statistics for a QR code created from a link with a UTM tag in the Sources, summary and UTM Tags reports.