QR code for Google review: a counter card that opens the form

What the QR code for Google review opens

A QR code for Google review opens the review form for your business listing. The customer scans, the phone shows the form with the stars ready, and they type what they want to say. The code does not hold the review, the stars or the listing. It opens one address, and that address is the form.

That matters for the card. A customer at the counter has their phone out for perhaps ten seconds. The code has to be found, scanned and opened inside that window. Everything below is about making those ten seconds easy.

The counter card

The printed object is a counter card: a small standing card beside the till, the water jug or the bill folder. Two sizes work well. An A6 card, 105 mm by 148 mm, stands on its own with a fold or a plastic easel. A square card of 100 mm by 100 mm sits flat in an acrylic holder.

Print on 300 gsm board or thicker. Thinner card curls under a ceiling fan within a week. A matt finish is better than gloss, because a gloss surface throws back the light from the counter lamp and the camera struggles with the glare. If the card will meet wet hands or a tea spill, ask the printer for a matt lamination rather than gloss.

Keep one code per card. A card with a menu code, a payment code and a review code on it asks the customer to read three captions before scanning. Put the review code on its own card, or on its own side.

The size of the code

Size depends on the distance between the phone and the card. A counter card is scanned from about 0.3 metres, sometimes 0.5 metres when the customer leans back. A rule that holds up in practice is a code width of at least one tenth of the scanning distance. At 0.3 metres that is 30 mm. At 0.5 metres it is 50 mm.

For an A6 card, print the code at 40 mm to 50 mm across. On the 100 mm square card, 50 mm leaves room for the ask above and the name below. Do not go under 30 mm on anything that stands on a counter. A code that is 20 mm wide scans fine from a leaflet held in the hand, but on a counter the phone is further away and the lens has to work harder.

The quiet zone counts too. Leave a clear margin around the code of at least four of its smallest squares, and in practice 5 mm of plain background on every side. Printers like to tuck a border close to the code. Ask them not to.

A review code is a short address, so the code itself has few squares and large ones. That is the easy case for scanning. A long address with tracking tags added to it makes a dense code with tiny squares, and that is the one that fails at 30 mm. Keep the address short, or use a dynamic code so the printed pattern stays simple whatever sits behind it.

The ask

The words around the code do most of the work. A code on its own gets ignored, because nobody knows what it opens. Say what it opens in plain words, above the code, in letters at least 5 mm tall: "Scan to leave us a Google review." That one line tells the customer what will happen when the camera opens.

Below the code, one more line helps: "It takes about a minute." People will not start something they think is long. A line about time lowers the cost of trying.

Do not offer a discount or a gift for a review on the card. Review platforms treat that as buying reviews, and the listing can lose reviews or worse. Say thank you, not here is a discount. If you want to reward customers, reward them for the visit, not for the stars.

The person at the counter should say the line too. "If you have a minute, there is a card for a Google review by the till." Said once, as the bill is settled, it brings far more scans than the card sitting there silent. Train it as a habit, not a script. The card is the reminder after the person has walked away.

Contrast and colour

The camera reads the code by finding dark squares on a light ground. Keep it that way: dark code, pale background. Black on white is the safe choice. Dark navy or deep green on cream also read well. Avoid a light code on a dark background, because many phone cameras invert the image badly and the scan takes longer or fails.

Brand colours can go on the card, around the code, in the heading and the border. Keep the code itself dark and plain. If you want to see how a colour choice reads before committing to print, the colour and shape preview shows the code in your colours so you can test it with your own phone first.

Print a test card at actual size on the printer's stock before the full run. Scan it from 0.3 metres and from 0.5 metres under the shop's own lights, not under daylight at the printer's desk. Scan it with an older phone as well as a new one. If the older phone takes more than two seconds, the code is too small or too pale.

Where the card stands

Put the card where the customer waits, not where they order. At a cafe counter that is beside the card machine. At a salon it is at the till where the bill is settled. At a clinic reception it is at the desk where the next appointment is booked. The customer is standing still, their phone is often already out, and the visit has just finished, which is when the memory of it is sharpest.

Angle the card so it faces the customer, tilted back by about fifteen degrees. A card lying flat on the counter is read at a slant and the code looks squashed to the camera. An easel or a fold solves this.

One card per counter is enough. A second card on the table or in the bill folder helps in a sit-down place, where the ask is made at the table. The code stays the same on every card; only the position changes.

When the link changes

A business listing can move. The shop changes its name, moves two doors down, or the listing is merged with a duplicate. The review form address changes with it, and every printed card now opens nothing useful.

A dynamic code avoids the reprint. The printed pattern points at a short address that forwards to the review form. When the form address changes, you change the forward and the cards keep working. The same holds if you decide the code should open a feedback page first, with the review link behind it, which some owners prefer for a few months after a rough patch. Dynamic codes that can be re-pointed are the kind to order for anything that goes to print, and the review card is going to print.

A dynamic code also counts scans, so you can see how many customers opened the form each week. The count is of scans, not reviews. The two will differ, and the gap tells you whether the problem is the card or the form.

Ordering the code

Send us the address of your review form or the name of your listing, and the size you plan to print, and we send back the code as a file ready for the printer at 40 mm or 50 mm with the quiet zone already in place. Use code STARTUP10 for 10% off one order per account. It is valid until 31 December 2026 or for the first 100 uses on this site, whichever comes first.

To order one, open the Google review QR code page, paste your review form address and choose the dynamic option.