Your website's address is easy to mistype and easy to forget, which is why a QR code on a shop window, a trade-show banner or a product box works better than text alone. Someone points a phone at it and lands on your site directly, no domain typed from memory.
It suits any business, club or project with a site worth sending people to. The code is made in your browser, free with no account, and never expires, because the address sits inside the pattern itself. Which page it opens matters more than the colors, so decide that first, then style it to match your website.
Making a website QR code, step by step
Pick the page, not just the domain
The homepage suits a van or a door sign; a flyer about summer hours should open the summer hours page. Open that page and copy the address from the browser's address bar.
Paste it into the Link field
If you leave off https://, it is added for you. Without it, a bare domain would be encoded as plain text and nothing would open.
Load the page on mobile data
Turn off WiFi and open it on your phone. If it is slow, asks for a login or hides behind a full-screen cookie banner, fix that before printing.
Style, scan, download
Add colors or a logo, scan the preview with your own phone, then download SVG for a printer or designer and PNG for documents and slides.
Which page of your site the code should open
People scan with a question in mind, and the page should answer it at once. A page made for the print piece usually works better than the homepage, and it lets you tell visits from the code apart in your own site analytics.
Homepage
For general-purpose print where people want to know who you are: vans, signage, stationery, the front door.
A specific page
For print about one thing: an offer, an opening, a product, a booking form. Making people search from the homepage loses most of them.
A campaign URL
Add UTM tags such as ?utm_source=poster so your analytics can attribute visits to the print run. Keep them short; every character goes into the pattern.
Keeping a website QR code small and readable
A QR code grows denser as the address gets longer. A short domain fits in one of the smallest versions of the pattern; a product URL with filters, session IDs and tracking tags can need three times as many modules. On a card or a label, that decides whether a phone reads it at arm's length.
Strip what the page does not need, such as session tokens and the fbclid or gclid tags ad platforms append. If the address is still long, a dynamic code encodes a short MakeQR link instead.
What is inside a website QR code
Nothing but the address, written as text in the pattern. The camera recognizes the https:// and offers to open the page. A static code has no redirect in between, so MakeQR cannot count, block or switch it off.
https://northside-bakery.com/Where website codes go and what size to print
Put the code where people have a spare moment: at eye level on a window, beside the till, inside the packaging flap, on the last slide of a talk. Scanning distance is about ten times the code's width, so a 2.5 cm (1 inch) code reads from roughly 25 cm. A window sign read from two meters away needs about 20 cm. Keep a plain margin at least four modules wide around it.
Print it at least 25 mm (2.5 cm) wide
Where website QR codes go wrong
Printing before the page is live
A code pointing at an unfinished page or a staging address sends early scanners to an error. Publish, scan the final code, then print.
Linking a page only you can see
Preview links and members-only pages look fine because you are signed in. Test the address in a private browser window first.
Rebuilding the site with new URLs
A redesign that moves /menu to /food breaks every static code pointing at the old path. Add a 301 redirect, or print a dynamic code that can follow the move.
Static or dynamic for a website?
If the code opens your homepage and your domain is settled, static is the right choice: free, permanent, and nothing sits between the scan and your site.
Choose dynamic when the page behind the code will probably change, such as a seasonal offer or a site you plan to rebuild, or when you want a scan count per print piece. It needs a free account, and the first two dynamic codes are free forever.
How dynamic QR codes workWebsite QR codes in use
- A bakery prints its homepage code on paper bags so customers can check opening hours and order ahead.
- A software company ends a conference talk with a code to the documentation page mentioned on stage.
- A nonprofit puts a code on fundraising flyers that opens its donation page directly.