The use of QR Codes has increased recently as a simply way to transfer data from a computer to a phone. In the United States, Android phones have lead the charge. Many developers have used them as a way to link customers to their apps in the Android Market.

While this experience has worked great for the user that visits a site by computer, it fails when visiting a site by phone. You can’t point your phone’s camera at your phone’s screen. That’s why I propose a new standard for using QR Codes on websites.

When posting a QR Code on your site, always:

• Make your QR Code at least 100×100 pixels for easy scanning.
• Put the link in the alt and title parameters of the QR Code image
• Encase your QR Code image in a link tag that has the same link as your code.

By doing this, you will ensure that you are maximizing a person’s ability to make use of your QR Code. Those users that are visiting your website via their phone’s browser, will be able to click on the code with the same result as if they scanned it. Users that visit your site via browser, can still scan the code, and will be able to see what the QR Code is providing by hovering their mouse over the image.

Here is an example:

<a href=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight”><img src=”http://flash-the-brain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/qrcode.png” style=”border: none;” alt=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight” title=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight”/></a>