QR Codes in Museums: One Label, Many Visitors

A museum label is printed once and hangs for years. The people reading it change every hour: a school class at ten, a tourist from Lyon at noon, a family on Saturday. A dynamic QR code on the label can open a different page for each of them, and you never touch the label again.

What a QR code on a label is good for

A label has room for a title, a date and two sentences. A QR code next to it opens everything that didn't fit:

• The longer story. Provenance, the artist's notes, the restoration.
• Audio. A recording of the curator or a guide, played on the visitor's own phone.
• Other languages. The same text in the languages your visitors actually speak.
• Material for groups. A worksheet or a question sheet for school classes.

The page it opens has to fit the moment. Someone standing in front of the object wants that object on the first screen, not your homepage and not a cookie banner.

Why a printed link is the problem

A plain QR code holds its link forever. When the exhibition page moves, the audio guide gets a new address, or the website gets rebuilt, every printed label points at the old page. Reprinting labels for a link change costs more than the QR code ever saved.

A dynamic QR code holds a short QRZY link instead, and you decide in the dashboard where that link sends people. Change it once and every printed label follows. Our dynamic QR codes page explains the idea, and changing a QR code after printing covers what you can and can't change.

One label, a different page for each visit

A dynamic QR code can do more than switch links by hand. It can follow rules, checked top to bottom on every scan, and the first one that matches wins:

1. Temporary exhibition: between the opening and closing dates, open the exhibition page. When the show closes, the rule stops matching on its own.
2. School groups: on weekday mornings, open the worksheet for classes.
3. Language: if the phone is set to French, open the French text. German phones get German. (Pro plan.)
4. Everyone else: the permanent collection page. That's the default, used when no rule matches.

Steps 1 and 2 use date and time rules, and those work on every plan, including Free. Language rules start on Pro. A language rule reads the language the visitor's phone or browser is set to; it doesn't ask and doesn't need an app.

Set it up with QRZY

1. Sign up, select Create QR, and put your permanent collection page in Default URL. Name the code after the object or the label, then select Create QR code.
2. Open the code's edit page. Under Smart rules, select Add step.
3. Under Send to, keep A link and paste the page for that step. Under When, pick the rule:
   • Between dates for an exhibition. Fill in the start and end dates.
   • Time of day for school groups, with a start and end time. Select Also restrict by… to tick the weekdays.
   • Language for translations. Type the language codes, like fr or de.
4. Check the Timezone on each date and time step. It starts as your browser's, and it should be the museum's.
5. Order the steps so the most specific one is on top, then select Save changes.

Scan the code with two phones before you print, one of them set to a different language if you use language rules.

How big to print it

People read a label from about half a meter away. Our QR code size guide gives the rule: the code's width is the scanning distance divided by 10, so about 5 cm for a label read from 50 cm. Keep it dark on light with a white border, and away from glass reflections and spotlights. If a label is behind a barrier, measure from where people actually stand.

Which plan fits

It depends on how many labels get a code:

• Free: one code, with date and time rules and up to 5 steps. Every scan shows a 5-second countdown, or a QRZY bar over your page, before the visitor gets there. Enough for one object or a test.
• Starter, $100 a year: 3 codes, no countdown.
• Pro, $250 a year: 25 codes, language and location rules, and 5 hosted pages if you'd rather not build the pages on your own website.
• Business, $600 a year: unlimited codes, for a whole collection.

All plans are billed yearly. If a paid plan ends, one code of your choice stays live (with the Free countdown) and the rest pause until you upgrade again. Check that before you print a gallery full of labels.

Each code counts its own scans, so you can see which objects people scan and when. Rules depend on the clock and the phone's language. QRZY can't tell who is standing in front of the label, so a teacher's class and a tourist scanning at the same time get the same page.

The QR codes for museums page shows the setup in full, and QR codes on exhibit labels covers the label itself. For the words next to the code, see what to write next to a QR code.

Common questions

Do visitors need an app? No. The phone's camera reads the code and opens the page in the browser.

Can the code show a different page during a special exhibition? Yes. A Between dates step opens the exhibition page while the show runs. After the end date, scans go back to the default page without you doing anything.

How does the language rule know the visitor's language? It reads the language the phone's browser is set to, not where the visitor comes from. A visitor from France with a phone set to English gets your English page, or the default page if you have no English step.

Can I see which exhibits get scanned? Yes. Each code counts its scans, with the time, the country and city from the network, and the device. Give every label its own code and you can compare them.