How QR Codes can Improve Catalog Sales
Posted on by Timothy Boyle
Attempting to make the shopping experience easier and more efficient for customers is an objective for most business, and for good reason. By increasing the ease and efficiency of said experience this translates into more sales and thus higher revenue. Finding ways to do this however are not easy to find or create. There is, however, one possible technology that can greatly enhance ease and efficiency, that being QR codes.
Let us take the example of a catalog. Say you just got the most recent L.L.Bean Holiday Season catalog and are flipping through and see a bunch of good gift ideas for Christmas. This person has a couple options to make the purchase, they could call a customer service rep and place the order over the phone, or they could go online and make the order from their computer. In the first case many people hate the phone and simply do not want to call to place an order. In the second case the person may not have access to a computer at that moment, is lazy and doesn’t want to get up and go to the computer, or whatever. It is likely then that some number of people are going to either be inconvenienced not to place their order, too lazy, or because of the delay in browsing the catalog and having access to the tools needed to place an order they might forget to ever make the purchase. Sales are certainly being lost.
How might these lost potential sales be saved? Easy. Use QR codes.
What the QR code can do here is create an easy way for the customer to place their order at the moment they are most interested and with no inconvenience to them. This might be done a couple of ways. You might simply place a single QR code on the front cover or back cover of the catalog and with a call to action tell the consumer to scan the code and order right from the phone. The QR code would then direct the consumer to a mobile optimized website where they can search for their desired goods and place the order right on their phone. Or perhaps each item in the catalog would receive a QR code and, assuming an accompanying app, the customer could scan the codes of the products he/she wants and upon scanning their items might be placed into their mobile shopping cart, and whenever they are done shopping the catalog they simply make the payment from their app and as easy as that they have made their purchase.
This sort of QR code use helps to ensure the capture of more sales through the convenience factor and efficiency factor, thus driving sales and increasing revenue. But it doesn’t just stop there. For the catalog company themselves this might mean fewer customer service reps taking calls since more people will be incentivized to order right from their app, thus reducing company overhead, increasing profits, or helping to aid in a reduction of prices.
If you are a catalog company and you don’t use QR codes in this way it is almost a guarantee that you are losing out on sales. Stop it. The 21st century awaits you.
Just make sure you use a platform that will provide you with all the features you will need to run a successful QR code campaign.
