Where to put your review QR code so people actually scan it

Three real reasons nobody scans it

Making the code takes five minutes. Getting it scanned is a different job. The failures we see are almost never about the code itself:

1. Wrong spot. The code sits somewhere the customer never stops - outside the door, high on a wall, or behind them once they have paid.
2. Nobody says anything. The code stands there quietly, the customer reads it as a payment code or an advert, and their eyes move on.
3. Scanning leads to a blank box. Faced with an empty review field, most people give up on the spot. That step is a bigger barrier than the placement.

This guide fixes the first two. The third is what the product itself is for: the customer scans, ticks a few things that actually happened, the page turns it into a paragraph, and they copy and paste - no blank page to start from.

Seven spots and who each suits

Judging a spot comes down to two questions: does the customer stop here, and are their hands free? A good spot needs both.

• The till or reception. The most universal spot. During the ten or fifteen seconds waiting for change or a receipt, they are standing still with their hands free. First choice for most businesses.
• On the table. A restaurant's built-in advantage: the customer sits here for half an hour or more. A table tent next to the condiments beats that one moment at the till by a long way.
• At handover. Garages, repairs, trades: the customer is standing there while you explain what you did. Attention is at its peak and so is satisfaction. Far better than the till.
• The bag, the takeaway box, the parcel. The only shot you get with takeaway and delivery. They open the bag at home, relaxed. A sticker costs pennies and covers everyone.
• Business cards and the back of the receipt. What the tradesperson leaves behind. If it does not occur to them that day, the card is still there two days later.
• A sign by the door. Useful in exactly one situation: when you walk someone out and mention it. Standing there alone, it gets nothing.
• A text or email afterwards. Catches everyone the spots above miss. Send it the same day, never the next, and add a line like "you came in this afternoon" so they remember which visit.

You do not need all seven. Doing one spot properly beats putting a code in all seven - the main spot drives most of the result, the rest just fill gaps.

Which spot suits which trade, we cover in the industry guides: Local SEO for restaurants: a working checklist, How auto repair shops get Google reviews, How nail and hair salons get Google reviews.

Three placements that waste your money

1. Outside the door or in the window. People walking past are not your customers, and people walking in are busy walking in. This is the most common waste.
2. In a row with every other QR code. Payment code, loyalty code, menu code, voucher code - add a review code and the customer cannot tell them apart, so they scan none of them. Give it its own space and say what it is for.
3. Tucked in a corner or mounted too low. The code needs to be at eye level and within arm's reach. On the side of the counter at knee height is the same as not putting it up.

How big, and on what

There is a common rule of thumb for size: the width of the code is roughly a tenth of the furthest scanning distance. On a table tent scanned from half a metre, 5 cm is plenty; a door sign scanned from two metres needs 20 cm.

You do not have to work it out yourself - the QR code size calculator takes one distance and gives you the minimum width, the size including the quiet zone, and the pixels needed at 300 dpi. Do not skip the quiet zone: a code with no white margin around it defeats a lot of phones.

Material follows the spot:

• Table tents and counter signs → laminated or acrylic; waterproof, greaseproof, good for a year
• Bags and boxes → adhesive stickers; disposable and pennies each
• Workshop bays and handover areas → a laminated hanging tag you can wipe

Plain paper on a restaurant table is dirty, curled and water-damaged within a week. Nobody scans a grubby code.

Make the code itself with the Google review QR code generator - paste a Google Maps share link and it comes out as an image. If you only need the link and not the code (for a text message or an email), use the Google review link generator.

The one sentence from staff

This section matters more than everything above it put together.

A code on its own gets single figures. A code plus one sentence multiplies it. The reason is simple: the customer does not know what it is, or what you would like them to do.

The sentence does not need to be long. Any of these work:

• "Was everything alright today? If you have a moment, scan this and leave a line - takes thirty seconds."
• "We are a small business and Google reviews really matter to us. Would you mind scanning this?"
• (sliding the table tent over) "If you get a chance, write us a line - anything at all."

The wording is not the point. Saying it to every customer is. Picking who to ask breaks the rules: inviting only the customers who look happy is review gating, which Google explicitly prohibits, and the cost is set out in Why you cannot ask only your happy customers.

The more practical problem is that staff forget. Relying on memory always fails, so put it on the checklist - the last step of the till routine, the last step of handover. More on that in How to ask customers for Google Reviews, and if you want ready-made wording, the Review request script generator.

What to watch in the first week

Do not watch the rating. In week one, watch whether anyone scans at all:

• A whole week and nothing arrived → the spot or the sentence is wrong; change the spot first
• People scan but nothing gets posted → the problem is after the scan; check the link is right
• They are coming in steadily → do not push harder, just track your footfall

Never organise a group to scan together to "see results faster". A cluster of reviews in a short window is one of the strongest signals Google's spam systems look for; even when every one is genuine, a cluster can be suppressed as a group. If that happens, work through Google review not showing up? Here is what is going on.

To know roughly how many a month is normal for your trade, run the Review pace estimator first. Having a number stops you panicking when week one produces two.