Consumers looking for more information about food safety information are increasingly seeing information on producer/processor/restaurant websites. I’d call that marketing food safety — in a good way — others still argue that food safety is a non-competitive issue. Regardless, QR (quick response) codes are a nice way for firms to point folks who have iPhones from marketing materials or from the product to these websites. Plano TX even uses QR codes directly on their inspection grades (taking the interested patron directly to the full inspection report).

fisheye (a marketing group) points out on their blog that it’s important for anyone using QR codes to ensure they test the user experience before launching codes. fisheye uses Foodland Ontario (that’s Ontario’s agriculture brand, Ontario is in Canada) as an example of how not to do it.

Walking down Queen West last weekend, we came across this outdoor poster for Foodland Ontario.

One of the first things I’ve noticed was the prominent QR code, offering further content; in this case egg recipes.

Rather than linking to a mobile enabled site specifically created for the purpose, the code simply linked to a single recipe on Foodland Ontario’s regular site. This means tiny copy, navigation that doesn’t work, poor content delivery and a disappointing user experience.What happened here is that the agency responsible for the work ignored one of the golden rules of QR integration: Make sure your content is presented in a format that’s mobile friendly.

Otherwise, you’ll be wasting opportunities.