QR Codes for Ecommerce
The insert is printed in bulk. The offer on it does not have to be.
NORTH LINE put one card in every parcel of the autumn run, twenty thousand of them, all carrying the same code. Nobody knows yet whether the card should open the care guide or the voucher, and the cards are already in boxes.
The rule engine
What the scanner gets
The care guide. Nothing about this scanner chose it. The hash did.
Sticky is the default: the bucket is a hash of the connecting address and the user agent together with the code and the rule, so the same person scanning twice sees the same page rather than flipping between them. A phone moving from wifi to mobile data can rebucket, which is the honest limit of doing this without a cookie.
Get this wrong and the same customer sees a different page every time they scan and stops trusting the card. Twenty thousand of them are already in boxes.
no subscription · pay per scan · nothing to cancel
Twenty thousand cards, printed before the data existed
The economics of insert printing push toward large runs, which means committing to an offer months before anything justifies it. Everything decided at the printer stays decided.
- A discount code printed on ten thousand inserts turns out to be the wrong number.
- Two variants would settle the question, but testing them means two print runs and a confounded comparison.
- The promotion ends and the remaining stock becomes waste paper.
- International orders land on a storefront in the wrong currency.
What NORTH LINE could still change after the boxes shipped
Print one code, decide the variants later
A split rule holds weighted variants. The insert carries one artwork and the weighting lives in the rule, editable at any time.
{ "variants": [{"name":"A","weight":50},{"name":"B","weight":50}] }Move the weights as evidence arrives
Shift traffic toward whichever variant is performing, or end the test entirely, without touching the printed stock.
Retire the offer without pulping the cards
When a promotion ends, repoint the code at whatever replaces it. Stock printed for a finished campaign becomes current again.
What stays editable after the boxes ship
- The offer itself
Repoint the code and every card in the warehouse and in transit follows. Editing the destination costs nothing.
- The split, mid-flight
splitSend a tenth of scans to a risky offer and the rest to the control, then move the weights.
- The same customer keeps their price
Sticky by default, so a customer who scans the insert twice sees the same offer rather than a different number.
- Which channel gets the credit
sourceThe same code in print and in email can resolve differently and report separately.
- The market it lands in
geoA country rule sends each market to the right currency and shipping terms from an insert printed once.
- Priced per scan, not per month
1 credit to create the code, 1 credit per scan, 5 credits per rule change. A slow season costs nothing.
Questions
Can I split-test an offer that is already printed?
Yes, provided the printed code is dynamic. The variants and their weights live in the routing rule rather than in the artwork, so a test can be started, reweighted or ended long after the inserts were printed.
Will a returning customer see a different price on a second scan?
Not in the default sticky mode. The variant is derived from a hash of the scanner and the code. The honest limit is that a phone moving from wifi to mobile data can rebucket, because we do this without a cookie.
How do I tell printed scans apart from email clicks?
Tag them and route on the tag. The source condition reads utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign or the referring host, so the same code in two channels can open two pages and report as two lines.
Can I wire this into my order system?
Partly. Creating and updating codes is available over the API and MCP. The routing graph is not: it is built in the browser and is not reachable programmatically today, which is worth knowing if unattended rule changes are part of your plan.
What happens to the insert when the promotion ends?
Repoint the code at whatever replaces it. Editing the destination costs nothing, so stock printed for a finished campaign becomes usable again rather than being pulped.