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6 ways to use QR-codes to increase conversion

May 20, 2011 By 1 Comment

QR codes are definitely not new, but lately more and more marketing people seem to be figuring out how to use them and places them on ads and other places around Sweden. Still I’ve not seen any examples showing a really good use of it. After all it has so much potential, why waste it? 

In this post I share a few examples on how to use QR-codes to help customers make on-spot decisions and a few other that make them convert even if not on-spot. Most buyers want to hear another opinion or read a bit about the product before they decide to make a purchase, at least when it comes to more expensive product and services. Why not help them make their decision by making that information even easier to access.

So here are a few ways to convert on-spot with QR codes:

Storage status

If you have many people in you store you might miss some opportunites for spontaneous purchases because of a line or because a product is not in store. Add a QR code next to all prices in for example an store selling electronic devices and you might have some one order one online if they do not you’re out of them in the store.

QR code – showing storage status and/or link to online store if ou

What does other say – social recommendations?

When browsing a store or looking at an ad, especially on more expensive products, the customer might want to check with family and friends what they think before making the purchase. Make others opinions more easy to reach by linking QR-codes to a feed of product reviews, perhaps on a statics side but even better to a social feed.

QR code – make reviews & recommendations more available

YouTube clips

Another way of reviewing product is watching the YouTube clip of them. This might be the case for tech products, but I think it could be create with any products that have YouTube introductions or usage clips. If someone wants to know how to use a product before buying them, share a QR code with a link to one or a couple of YouTube clips.

QR code – make the print information more dynamic with a YouTube clip

Here is another few examples that could increase conversion:

Email ad details to me

Most of us have read about how many times a person have to read and see a message to remember it. Now if you can get a person to save the message this might be a bit easier. Why not add a QR code to an ad which links to a page that send information about the ad, where the email then have a link to buy with. Perfect for when you get in front of the computer again.

QR code – email the details of an add with a link to make the purchase

Google Map Pins – Find our store

For those who do ads with the intention of getting people to visit their store, show the address but also a QR code with a Google Pin to their store or a link to “find the closest store.” People in a hurry can take a photo of a the QR code and then figure out the details on the way.

QR code – to make the address easier to find

Apartment for sales – link to the pictures of it

To end with a very concrete example, this one is for realtors. I often pass those signs outside of apartment viewings saying that one is welcome and showing two pictures of the apartment. Those I guess are primarily for people who knew about it to help them find their way, and I guess there are some spontaneous visitors. I do however believe that they miss an opportunity here for those who don’t dare to enter because they lack info. Add a QR code with a link to the full apartment and perhaps a few more spontaneous visitors will enter, if not to buy but to become potential clients.

QR code – to show more info about an apartment viewing

Read more about QR codes and how to use them here:

>> How QR Codes Can Grow Your Business
>> HOW TO: Make Your QR Codes More Beautiful

If you read this far, I am sure that you’ve come up with even more creative solution on how to use QR codes, so please share them and any good examples in the comment section.

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Development Tagged With: , ,

Why leaders should be inspired by online games

April 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A friend told me about Jane McGonigal’s Ted talk a few days ago, and this morning I finally had time to watch it. Believe me, you should no wait that look, you should drop everything right now and see it. Because if you are a online gamer you will learn about your possibilities and the education you have done, and if you are or will be a leader you will learn of what you should do to get the people you work with as passionate about what they to as an online gamer can be about the game.

Jane talks about how the ideas and wisdoms one can draw from online gaming can be used to save the world and I believe that it can be done. But more than that I think that her ideas can safe people’s daily drabness. If we could design work environment where we where contantly encouraged for what we did, like we are with skills in WoW, we could level more in real life to.

For example, If I’m a person who is terrible with numbers and great on speaking in front of people, I would already have a high skill on speaking but not on numbers. Then in my work place I could be encouraged to get even better at speaking, but also to improve what I’m not good at, and get points for everything I do which for example could give me a higher salary or a longer vacation. Perhaps one should get bigger rewards for developing the skills we are worse at.

Now, I know that some companies have grading systems similar to what I just said, but I think they are built in the wrong way. If you build them like games they could actually trigger the gaming feeling in everyday life and all of us could work to improve ourself.

Another point that Jane makes is that in gaming we are always trusted to complete the next challenge, and we always get challenges that are on our level or slightly higher. I think this is perhaps an even better lesson. As a leader you should trust your employees to complete their challenge and evenly important, you should make sure they know that you trust them.

Now, I should stop blabbering, and you should watch:

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

Improvement should be the focus for product development

March 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Recently I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of what makes some product so much more successful than others. As I work for in the telecom industry products easily become cellphones as this is something I know about. So what is it that makes the iPhone so much more successful than other brands? And how is it that iOS can keep so big market share when almost every other company develops with android?

I’ve seen a few things that I think defines this, and surely I’m not the first to figure it out, but what I want you to remember as the core idea is this: If you don’t believe in your own products then why would anyone else?

Product improvement

How many people can name four or five HTC models? Or SE past the “3310”? Anyone know the name of the “Apple phone” and most knows all the versions. Apple could have renamed and redesigned all the iPhones they have created, but instead of doing that they have kept improving the original iPhone. Showing that they believe in the product (while admitting there is always room for improvement) so we can too. While all other phone producers keep changing them so much that the customer cannot assume that they can easily change phone from the same producer without having to relearn the functionality.

Focus on the basic functions

Apple has realized that it is the basic features on the phone that is still the most important and most used. Calling, texting, now; emailing, checking calendar, etc. Thus they have focused on making these functions easy to use and keep improving them. Such as letting email sort after subject etc.

One fits all instead of one of each one

There have been many rumors implying that Apple is planning a “cheaper” iPhone. Personally I doubt this, but anyway,  only having one phone, thought a few versions of it. Makes it really easy for the user to choose which iPhone they want. Sure you can buy in different colors and GB, but here Apple once again prove that they believe in their products. They aren’t saying “these couple of phones are good, pick one of them” they are saying “this one is the best”. I wonder what make it easier for the customers ;)

Steve Job’s introduction of all new products

Before every launch of every product of version of it we here Steve Jobs stand up and tell us about it. To have the CEO introduce or talk about a product is not that rare, but with Jobs enthusiasm toward the products and his (at least perceived) knowledge, at least I get the feeling that he has been part of creating them. And that is more than I can say about many other leaders “representing” their products.

Usability and consistency

A while back I questioned, “is usability the key to success?” when it comes to Apple it is at least on the most important things., if not the most important. We have seen many YouTube clips of two year olds using the iphone and the 100 year old woman using the iPad, that if anything shows that they made them easy to use. And we like easy!

 

In other words.. You have to believe in your product to make everyone else do it to, be proud and improve instead of starting from scratch!

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings Tagged With: , , ,

Bring sales in to the phone with mobile webpages!

February 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Sweden, and many other parts of the world, seems to have caught app-fever a while back. When even the banks are competing about who’s application is most user-friendly, that says something. Though I love apps, and have got quite a few, I’m still a bit surprised by this, at least when I look at how many more have apps than a mobile page.

After all, mobile pages will bring more sales to new customers than mobile apps.

Why? It’s simple, when you are looking into buying something, you will Google to find the company website or a place to buy the product. You won’t go and download the app, to see if the app even offers a store only to see it’s not and then go to find the website. Maybe someone will, maybe in the future more of us will, but we are not there yet.

Then we find the company website in our phones, so we checking out, zooming in and out, scrolling around, waiting for the page to load, only to find out that no, I really do not want to buy anything in my cellphone on this page because there is to much of a hassle.

But once in a while, we find those mobile webpages, that sure has a link to the main page, but mostly are shaved down to the most necessary functionality to fit easy in the phone, and we get tempted into buying, right there, on the metro or where ever we might be.

The only problem is that most companies want us to buy with credit card instead of pay pal, and in Sweden this mean that most have to go through “verified by visa”, and when do we ever have that little extra thing for security banking in the bag. Never! Screwed again.
Companies are really making it difficult to bring sales into the cellphones, and it could be so easy!

  • A mobile page & a easy/portable pay option. (Maybe – book now, pay with your email confirmation)

Example; where would you prefer to buy?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Business development Tagged With: , ,

Stop saying that it is not part of your job – and learn something new!

February 18, 2011 By 1 Comment

For most of us parts of our job includes developing, using and taking decisions about things that does not belong to our main specialty. If could be anything from ordering IT systems to defining how to profile a product in the market or something completely different.

In these situations we have two choices. We can either try to limit the situation down to what we do know and decide from there.  People who think like this often say “I don’t know about this, and this is not part of my job.” Or we can try to understand the situation to the extent that we feel confident about what we take a decision about.

I argue that it cannot come much good from the first alternative. It might be the simple solution and if we’re lucky, it might even turn in to good things But most of the time I think that making decisions this way will only come back to haunt us. With things that need to be changed or fixed, and many times cost us more than what the time to fully understand would have.

The other way is far better in the long run I say. But it does take a lot more effort, time and energy. As it expect you to constantly wider your knowledge. However, by always trying to think everything trough and understand the whole picture you will probably end up saving time in the end.

So please people, stop saying that it is not part of you job, you might actually end up learning something from it. And that is when inspiration strikes!

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Career development Tagged With: , ,

No more multitasking – just answering is the key to productivity

February 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Multitasking or doing one thing at the time. Working early in the morning or working-out before work. The theories on how to be most productive are many and sure you can try all of them to see which makes you most productive. However, it is my firm believe that everyone has their own way of accomplishing their highest degree of productivity and it this does not necessarily mean that it won’t change depending on the circumstances.

Having that said, I thought I would share one of the thing that many people ask me about. “How the h**l do you have time for everything?” I’m believe in completing one task at the time to do them at the fullest, but I also believe that you should never let your team members wait for an answer of a question you can answer in less than 15 minutes. (Which might be why a colleague one’s reminded me to answer an email I’ve received 8 hours earlier)

My theory is this: If I am focused on one thing and trying to fix this and I get stuck because I need information or knowledge from one of my team members, I tend to want it as soon as possible rather than the next day. That might mean that my colleagues have a similar idea.

Giving is getting – or what do they say? If I learn how to answer their questions while still focus on my bigger task, I can help them stay focused and the processes can continue while I’m not focusing on the exact same thing as they do. As an example, imagine that you have two project running parallel with different people on them. If I can answer a quick question for project B, that one can keep going while I’m focusing on project A.

Thinking like this have made risen my level of productivity significantly for a number of reasons:

1. Projects I work on rarley “get stuck”

2. People tend to answer my questions fast as I do the same for them

3. I can have many things running parallel

Sure this have it’s down-sides as well. As an example, people tend to ask me questions they know that others can answer as well, simply because they know that I’m likely to answer faster.

Either way, try once or twice to think like this when you are really focused on what you’re doing and “you” might be able to get even more things done.

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Thoughts on transparency

February 7, 2011 By 2 Comments

Tonight I sat down with miss Sara Öhman and discussed a few social media topics as a preparation for tomorrow’s lecture. One of the things mentioned (ofcourse!) was transparency and eventhough we decided not to continue discussing it,  it got me thinking.

What does it really mean to be transparent? The first thing I think about is sharing and full-disclosure. But more than that you also have to think about the amount. Am I more transparent if I update everything I do during the day? Or am I more transparent if I occasionally share everything? Can I say that I am transparent if I don’t share everything all the time?

For me transparency is about not hiding things. If someone feeds me their every step it might even be more difficult to see who they really are, because of the information overload. Regardless of what some might say, there is something called too much information!

My conclusion is that if you are totally transparent: you allow yourself to share anything but you don’t share everything.

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings, Social Media Tagged With: ,

Introverted leaders doesn’t have proactive workers, good listeners do!

February 6, 2011 By 2 Comments

I just finished reading an article from the December issue of Harvard Business Review called “The hidden advantages of quiet bosses”. The article discusses the benefits of introverted leaders compared to extraverted leaders and focuses on who will have the most proactive workers.

The author Adam M. Grant argues that introverted leaders makes better leaders as they have more proactive workers. While extraverted leaders have less proactive workers as they tend to feel threatened by them. I cannot help but find this quite a strange claim because in my mind, workers do not become proactive because they have the room to be proactive. They do it because they feel encouraged and inspired to do so. Sure leader who feels threatened will not have proactive workers but I do not think being extraverted means feeling threatened by proactivity. I find that a big generalization.

Instead I want to argue that leaders that are good listeners are those who will have the most proactive workers. Because they will not only allow a worker to be proactive but they have a higher chance of encouraging their workers to be proactive as they will feel that they are noticed for it. Leaders which are good listeners will give workers the space and attention necessary to become proactive.

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Why don’t you just do what you love?

February 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

What do you do for fun? Play wow? Travel? Listen to music? Watch countless of youtube clips? Whatever it might be, it might be the key.

There is currently a quite popular Facebook app that allows you to check how many hours you’ve spend browsing Facebook. I have not tried it myself, mostly because I think the number is scaringly high ;) But it got me thinking on how many hours I’ve spend browsing the web in general and how much I have to thank that in my work. There are few development questions that I cannot associate to previous experiences for my own casual surfing.

Isn’t this a proof for that I’m really doing what I was meant to do? Think about it, if you spend hours watching tv or playing wow it might be a reason for it? What did you learn while enjoying yourself on other things?

I think we all know a bunch of people who are clueless about what they want to do in life. Isn’t this where we should start advising them on? If we listen closely enough I think it is evident in most. Yet we look at what we know and try to find suggestions for them based on that.

Totally lost track of my initial posting idea, but I find this ideas worth putting out there.

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings

Everyone else created their own daily – so I did it too!

January 26, 2011 By 5 Comments

After being featured in countless of “daily’s” made by people via paper.li, I cannot say anything else but that I was curious and very skeptical. Yet, my curiosity won and I created my own “daily”, though for now it is called What’s up!

Honestly, I have not really figured out the benefit with it yet, exempt for giving people who don’t have Twitter a place to read many of the things I read in a place with nice layout. If you have twitter and/or google reader and follow me you get a screened version of what I read… I only share what’s worth sharing after I read it my self. This streams everything that people I follow share, of which for most people is information overload.

Anyway… I will give it a real shot, after all, I did not see the point of Twitter either from the very beginning. ;)

ps.. here is the address http://paper.li/AnnelieNaes

Filed Under: Annelie's Musings Tagged With: , ,
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