Online Real Estate Technology

I’ve had a couple of agents send me emails this week inquiring about QR Codes, so I thought I’d write this post to explain what they are and how you can use them in your real estate business.

QR stands for “Quick Response”, and they are the next generation of bar codes. They have been in Japan for awhile with the Japanese going absolutely crazy over them and they are just starting now to appear in this country.

So what do they do?

• They contain lots of information such as your web site address

• They can be read upside down and faster than a standard bar code

• You can get a QR reader for your phone or iPhone – as long as it can browse the web.

• They can be scanned from a computer screen,a newspaper or flyer, magazine and Property billboard or Listing signboard.

So how does it apply to real estate, by generating a code, which is a simple process, you can apply the bar code to your listing sign board,your advertising including print and magazine or flyers, and people can simply scan the code and your phone will take you directly to the web site that the code has embedded.The code is scanned by taking a photo of the code and the phone then opens up a browser which takes you directly to the URL in the code.

This is a great tool if you want to specify a web site or property for First Home buyers or Retirees etc, as the code will take your reader directly to the URL you have specified. You can create your QR code to send people to a web site URL, a telephone number,an SMS message or text message.

Here’s a code I created, which when read will send you directly to my web site at www.mikeandrewconsulting.com, although I could have scanned any URL and sent you there if I wanted to promote a product or service.

You can add these to your business cards as well, which is a great promotional tool for your agency. You can download a QR reader from iTunes if you have an iPhone and some of the Nokia phones have the reader as standard.

To generate the bar code is a really simple process as all you do is search on the web and you’ll find a site, in fact to make it easy for you here’s the link to one I used.

Good luck and have fun with this, it’s a great promotional tool and you can add it anywhere.

If you’d like to have more information on this or are not technical enough to add it to your marketing, send me a comment or email at info@mikeandrewconsulting.com and I’ll help you out as always.