BeQRious = yet another URL redirection based QR management platform

Every man and his dog is suddenly talking about QR codes (like they just appeared overnight).

The problem is a lot of people are "doing it wrong".

I was sent the BeQRious announcement about their new QR management platform this week and just like all the other current generation of QR management platforms they are doing it all wrong.

As you can see from the screenshot above if you use one of their codes that the platform generates it doesn't actually lead to your website but leads to their website which they then redirect to your site. - Yeh ok but if they turn off the servers everything stops working.

For as long as you want to code to work out there in the field you HAVE to keep paying their invoices otherwise the codes will stop working immediately, regardless of how much they jack up the prices etc.

It's these BS shortcuts that people are being suckered into where they dont understand the ramifications that are going to give QR code management platforms a bad name.

I cant stress how much i think any URL Redirection based solution = Fail.

Instead you should ALWAYS have a web url QR code go to YOUR servers and then get redirected by your DNS eg http://www.cognation.net/QR that then redirects to the mobilised content you want to serve up for that particular campaign.

NEVER rely on someone else to be "in the middle", if you do and they go out of business or decided to jack up the rates all of your deployed codes will stop working (for the same reason i hate MsTags).

I'm sure eventually soemone will build the next generation of QR management platforms but this isnt it.

If you need a 60 second overview of QR code basics check out http://www.Cognation.net/QR


Cheers,
Dean



Followup:

I was contacted by the CEO of BeQRious this morning who was upset with my comments about his company.


His concern was that "I didn't highlight BeQRious offer users the ability to encode a url to resolve directly to a users url (without analytics) but don’t have the technical capabilities built into their product for offering analytics when clients encode the urls to go direct".

He didn't give any indication if this was something they were working on or had thought of implementing it before he read my post.

However according to another CEO in the QR analytics space, clients don’t care about the issue I'm raising and clients fully understand that their QR will stop working the moment they stop paying our invoices.......
http://www.facebook.com/#!/antonymcgregordey/posts/145837922130030




##
I'm seriously not trying to troll here, I'm just trying to make sure people that pay me to advise them with their QR campaigns understand the ramifications of their choices and best implement QR codes which is a fantastic technology, but needs to be implemented correctly.