Marketing Your Guide to Your Visitors

Why On-Site Marketing Matters

Most visitors don't check your website before they arrive - they respond to what's in front of them: a poster by the entrance, a card on the table, a code by the till. Marketing your Guide on-site, alongside your existing channels like your website, social media and ticketing platform, is what turns a great conversational guide into one people actually use.

Getting Your QR Code Print-Ready

The single biggest driver of scan reliability is size relative to distance. As a rule of thumb, a QR code scans reliably from about ten times its own width - a code read from a metre away needs to be at least 10cm across. Table-top formats held at arm's length can work at 3-4cm, but anything viewed from further than a stride away, like a pavement sign, needs to be considerably bigger.

Keep a clear, empty border (the “quiet zone”) of at least four modules on every side - it's the single most common reason a code fails to scan, especially once it's dropped into a busy poster design. Export at high resolution, ideally as vector artwork, and keep the code perfectly square. Even a slight rotation or stretch measurably hurts scan rates.

Contrast, Colour and Finish

Dark code on a light background scans best. Aim for strong contrast, roughly a 4.5:1 ratio, and check it again under the lighting it'll actually sit in, not just on a screen. For an outdoor or high-traffic spot, choose a matte finish over gloss: glossy laminate and glass reflect overhead lights, and glare can blind a phone camera just as easily as poor contrast can. If you're adding a logo or brand colour into the code itself, use a higher error-correction setting so it still reads cleanly around the customisation.

Where to Place It

Put your QR code where a visitor is already pausing, not somewhere they have to go looking for it: a reception desk, an entrance, a table, a queue line. Position it at eye level or below where possible, out of direct sunlight or glare, and give it room to breathe from other signage. Match the format to the moment: something like a table talker works best up close, a counter poster for a glance across a desk, and a pavement or A-frame poster for passers-by a few metres out. We've built templates for all three, sized for exactly this.

Test Before You Print

Before anything goes to print, test the actual file at actual size with three or four different phones, from the distance and angle a real visitor would use. It's the only way to catch a code that looks fine on screen but fails once it's printed, laminated or lit differently in situ.