West Hampstead Letting Agent Look At Smart Phone Technology
ARLA reports on What is a QR code and as an Estate Agent, why should I care!?
So you’ve all got yourselves your mobile ‘apps’ and are frantically getting to grips with the wonderful world of ‘social media’, but what about the latest craze to hit the world of business? – The QR (Quick Response) code.
Put very simply, QR codes are a form of barcode that make the storing and retrieving of data very quick and simple, principally through use of an app on a mobile phone such as an iPhone or Android device. Simply open the app, point the camera at the QR code, and wait for the magic to happen.
Scanning a QR code can perform a number of different actions from displaying text, contact information, composing an email, or opening a web page in your mobile phones web browser. The later of these actions is probably what you will see most often – point your camera at a QR code and be taken to a web page with all the information the company using the code would like you to see.
The QR wave
QR Codes were created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process, but have since burst onto the scene in 2011 with virtually all major global brands including Subway, Coca-Cola, and the BBC making use of them on a regular basis. The technology should not be ignored. The increasingly common use of so called ‘smart phones’ to access the internet means QR codes offers interesting opportunities for estate agents to direct people from offline media to online.
Take a simple scenario in the world of the property agent. A prospective client walks past a property you’re marketing, scans the QR code you’ve added to the For Sale board and within 5 seconds is looking at a page on your website with all the information they need about the property. One more click and they’re making a call to your office to arrange a viewing. Neat eh?
Here are some advantages to using QR codes:
Simple, fast, and inexpensive to create and distribute
Connects people with detailed product information
Smartphone’s with QR code readers are becoming increasingly common
And here are some examples of what a QR code can include are:
URLs
Text
Phone numbers
Complete contact information
SMS text messages
Calendar events
An email address
A geographic map location
