Knovolo Mobile Marketing Reviews
QR Codes at Shopping Mall Potomac Mills
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It’s only been about a year since I was last at Potomac Mills mall in northern Virginia, but a lot has changed. Some stores have gone out of business, there are new vending machines (my faves being mini ice cream scoop dispensers and stuffed Angry Birds), and retailers are using social networking and QR codes all over the place!
Last summer, most shoppers and retailers had never seen anything like a QR code anywhere except on UPS shipping receipts.
I took the liberty to snap a few pictures, scan some QR codes, and evaluate the consumer experience of this new technology.
Spencer’s
Spencer’s had a nice poster at the entrance to the store which prompted shoppers to Like them on Facebook, and provided a QR code to facilitate.
My Take: it’s great! I’ve griped before about Facebook not directing mobile users to their mobile site, but this seems to be fixed now! Easy user experience and appropriate use of QR code.
Pepsi Cup
I was going to buy a smaller drink, then saw that this 21-ounce Pepsi cup had a QR code on it! It didn’t tell me why I should bother scanning it, but I did anyway. Or rather, I tried. My phone couldn’t detect the code. I didn’t have any other devices to test on, but I think that the image was stylized (the little black squares are quite rounded) in a way that makes it difficult for mobile cameras to read. Perhaps the roundness of the cup was a factor.
My Take: No dice. It would have been good to know why they wanted me to scan the QR code in the first place (game? coupon?), and it should have worked!
Comfort Advertisement
I couldn’t figure out which company put up this ad board, but props to them for adding a QR code! Negative points, however, for directing it to a non-mobile website. That’s right, they include this code so you can scan it with your phone, then they send you to a website that you can hardly read on your phone.
I’ve ranted before about the extreme shortsightedness of pointing QR codes to non-mobile sites. I guess they didn’t read my blog.
Video Review: REI’s Store Locator
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Read our written mobile reivew review on REI’s mobile store locator.
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Tags: cell phone, GPS, LBS, location, location-based services, Mobile Marketing, mobile phone, QR code, REI
REI’s QR Code Store Locator
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Introduction
This QR Code leads to REI's Mobile Store Locator page
Most of us in the Great Northwest have some degree of an outdoorsy spirit, and for those of us who actually get out in nature on occasion, REI is an established starting point for gear and advice.
On the back of last month’s REI magazine, we were thrilled to find – next to some “Winter Boots for Family Fun” – a QR code which was there to help you locate the REI store nearest you. I eagerly grabbed my Android, launched my barcode scanner app, and scanned the QR code to “watch the magic happen”, as they put it. I wasn’t entirely disappointed.
The Basics
| Company | REI |
| Call to Action | Scan this QR code to find the REI store nearest you (Found on the back of the 2010 REI Winter Sale Memeber Magazine) |
| Date | Winter 2010 |
| Description | This campaign uses a QR code to point mobile phone users to a REI store-locator page |
| Mobile Technologies Used | QR code, mobile web, device detection |
Mobile Technology Rating
| QR code
|
| First off, props to REI for embracing mobile technology (as they have before) – we have pretty high expectations since this isn’t REI’s first forray into the mobile arena. Initially, we weren’t disappointed! The QR code points to a mobile-optimized webpage (many campaigns forget the painfully obvious point that the webpage needs to look good on mobile devices since mobile devices will be scanning the QR code) which looked pretty good on the Android and Windows Mobile devices we tested on. |
| Device Detection
|
 Webpage without Device Detection |
| Mobile Web
|
| The sope of this review doesn’t cover the entire mobiel REI site, but the page that the QR code takes you to certainly looked good on mobile devices and functioned as it was supposed to. A search for “seattle” pulled up all of the REI stores in the Greater Seattle Area. However, who wants to type in their location into a GPS-enabled smartphone? |
| GPS
|
| This is where we started to get disappointed with the experience. The mobile webpage looked good, but the store locator required that we search by zip code or city. Why can’t I share my location so that m.rei.com can tell me that their Seattle flagship store is just three blocks away from where I’m standing? This is 2010, folks. (Almost 2011.) We shouldn’t need to type in the city or zip code of where we’re standing to search for businesses on smartphones. |
Final Rating: 3 stars
REI is definitely on the right track here, and this experience would have earned 5 stars if it happened in 2008. However, almost all smartphones now have GPS, and this is feature that searchers on mobile smartphones expect. For now, I’ll use Google to find REI from my phone.
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