Where to put a QR code in your shop so people actually scan it

A QR code works where people are already standing still and already curious. That means your window, your counter, your bags and your receipts, in that order, and each one needs a different size and a different line of text next to it.

Your window

This is the only one that works when you are closed.

Someone walks past at nine in the evening, scans, and gets your opening hours, your prices and a way to message you. Without it they walk on and you never knew they were there.

A window code has to be read from the pavement, which means it has to be big. The rough rule is that a code is scannable from about ten times its own width, so a code the size of your palm is good for roughly an arm and a half away. If people have to lean in towards the glass, it is too small.

Your counter

The till is the best spot inside the shop, and it is not close.

It is the one moment where a customer is standing still, looking down, and waiting for something to finish. They are not browsing and they are not walking. A small card or sticker beside the card reader catches exactly that pause.

This is also where you should put the code if you only ever do one of these.

Your bags and packaging

Low effort, slow burn.

A sticker on a bag goes home with someone who has already bought from you, which makes it the cheapest way to be found again by a customer you already won. Any single bag is unlikely to get scanned. A few hundred bags a month is a different story.

Keep these small but not tiny. Under about two centimetres across, a code starts to fail on longer web addresses, and it will fail quietly: you will not notice, because your own phone will manage it in good light while a customer's will not.

Your receipts

If your till can print a line of text at the bottom of a receipt, that line is free advertising you are currently not using.

It reaches every single paying customer, which nothing else on this list does.

The part most people get wrong

A bare code with nothing written next to it is the version that gets ignored. People do not scan a black square to find out what it is.

Write what they get. "Scan for our menu" beats "Scan here", and both beat a code on its own. It costs you one line and it is the difference between a sign that works and a sticker nobody ever looked at.

Say what is behind it, and make sure it is true. A code promising a menu on a page with no menu is worse than no code at all, because the one person who did scan now knows you waste their time.

You do not have to design any of this

If your page is live, open your QR code in the dashboard and choose Print a ready-made kit. You get one page to print with a window sticker, a counter card and eight small stickers, already at the right sizes, already carrying your business name and a line saying what the code opens.

Print it anywhere, cut along the dashed lines, and put the pieces where this post says.