QR scans vs short-link clicks: which product promotion should you fund again?

Suppose you run a small soap shop and want to sell a boxed lavender soap set. You put a printed card beside the shop’s individual bars, email existing customers and pay for a local social ad. Each promotion sends shoppers to the same set, available online or in the shop.

When it’s time to order more cards or renew the ad, the reports show QR scans and short-link clicks. Which promotion deserves the money?

Start with the sales each promotion can be linked to, then subtract its costs. Keep the scan and click counts alongside that calculation to explain where shoppers responded and where purchases stopped.

Give every route an identifiable address

QR codes already appear on retail packaging to help shoppers reach information beyond the label. One documented packaging deployment lets shoppers scan for production and sourcing details. That is a useful interaction, but it does not establish a sale.

For the soap set, make the purchase action explicit: “Shop the lavender soap set.” Put a readable short address beside the printed QR code. Use a clickable button in email and the ad’s website button so shoppers can open the product page directly on their phone.

A shopper who likes the lavender soap can open the boxed set from your display card without searching the shop. In email, a direct product link makes that same choice easy.

Assign separate routes before distributing anything:

Promotion	Customer action	Reporting label
Display card	Scan its QR code	Display card, QR
Same card	Type its short address	Display card, printed address
Customer email	Tap the product button	Email, product link
Paid social ad	Tap the website button	Paid social, product link

The card’s QR code and readable address need different tracked routes if you want separate counts. Reusing the email link beneath the QR code would mix print responses with email responses. Reusing one QR code across several displays would also prevent its count alone from identifying the display. If the printed piece is mailed, use the direct-mail worksheet to record each drop, response route and later outcomes.

Keep a spreadsheet mapping each route to its destination and UTM tags. These are labels added to a destination URL so website reporting can identify the campaign and source. Use one campaign name, such as lavender_set_autumn, with different source and content labels for each route. Test that the redirect preserves them.

A printed address may be shared and clicked later. Call its activity “printed-address visits” rather than claiming every visitor typed it. At promotion level, group those visits with the card’s QR activity, while retaining separate columns. Check that your QR and link reports do not count the same redirect twice.

Compare the same selling period

Choose a common start and end date, one reporting time zone and the same amount of time for later purchases to appear. An illustrative schedule is a fortnight of promotion followed by a week for purchases after the final interaction. These are planning choices, not expected results.

For that review, include purchases linked to interactions during the promotion period and completed within the agreed follow-up window. List later interactions separately. If your reporting cannot apply that rule, record its actual attribution window and use the same rule across channels where possible.

Keep the soap set’s price, offer and availability consistent. Record when the cards went out, when the email was sent, when the ad ran and any stockouts. A full month of scans cannot fairly compete with a weekend of clicks.

The audiences still differ. Existing email customers may already trust the shop; the paid ad may introduce it to new people. Separate first-time and returning buyers where order records allow. You are comparing these promotions under their actual conditions, not proving that one format always works better.

Check what happened after the visit

A scan or click is recorded activity. Repeated visits and automated requests can affect counts, depending on filtering. Neither count equals people, and dividing orders by raw scans does not produce a reliable shopper conversion rate.

Before launch, make a test purchase through each route. Confirm that the order contains the soap set and that the source can be recovered. Exclude test orders and note test activity in your comparison.

Your shop platform may already provide useful evidence. Shopify’s order conversion summary, for example, can show visit details and campaign tags when available. It also documents cases where tracking information is incomplete or absent.

For counter purchases, use distinct promotion references that staff can record against the sale, with the same offer across channels. A reference printed beside the QR code identifies the card promotion, not whether the buyer scanned or typed. Keep purchases known only at promotion level out of the route-level sales totals.

Build the sales record around order or receipt IDs. Include soap-set units, net product sales after discounts and refunds, and the evidence used to assign the promotion. If a shopper scanned the card and later clicked the email, apply one stated attribution rule consistently. Count the order once in the campaign total; keep earlier interactions as supporting detail.

Keep orders with an unknown source in a separate, unassigned group. Marketing attribution reports can account for only the sales they can associate with trackable activity.

Put costs beside the sales

Make one summary row per promotion, with the card’s scanned and printed-address routes grouped together. Record:

• QR activity and short-link visits in separate columns.
• Attributed soap-set orders, units and net product sales.
• Product and variable selling costs, including packaging and payment fees.
• Promotion costs and the amount remaining after those costs.

For print, include design, printing and distribution. Start with a proof on your own printer or a small copy-shop order; test the QR code and readable address on the finished card before buying a larger batch.

For digital, include creative work, actual ad spend and an appropriate share of email or tracking charges. Include staff time consistently. Keep paid social separate from ordinary unpaid posts. Deduct each discount or expense once.

Calculate attributed contribution after promotion = net product sales − product and variable selling costs − promotion costs. This is a campaign comparison, not total business profit or proof of additional sales caused by the promotion.

Cost per attributed order provides another comparison: promotion cost divided by attributed orders. With no attributed orders, mark it as unavailable. Review the next run’s costs too: reusable artwork may already be paid for, while printing and ad spend recur.

Choose tracking that earns its cost

A free static QR code can point to a maintained page with campaign tags, while email and ads use tagged links directly. Website analytics can still measure resulting visits and sales. You can update the page’s content even though the URL encoded in the static QR code stays fixed.

A dynamic QR code adds a managed redirect whose destination you can change after printing. Its scan counts can also help identify response patterns when the destination stays the same. Keep campaign identifiers distinct: changing tags on a shared redirect makes later scans of old cards receive the current tags.

A Graklink dynamic QR code and a permanent short link both include basic activity counts.

Keep sales verification in your store and receipt records, which remain the authority for the sale.

Before funding another run, reconcile the orders, returns and costs for each promotion. If the evidence is sparse, repeat a limited test after fixing missing tracking. If one promotion leaves more contribution with credible sales evidence, increase its budget cautiously and check whether that result holds as spending grows.