How to print a QR poster people actually scan

Start with the export, not a design tool

A QR poster that gets scanned comes down to four decisions: how wide you print the code, how much white surrounds it, where in the shop it sits, and what the line above it promises. Get those right and a plain sheet of office paper beats a designed poster. Waya handles the first two for you. The last two are yours, and this is how to make them.

Open the Printable Posters tab in your dashboard, pick a template, and press Print / Save PDF. Each design is built as a real print document: A4 portrait for wall sheets, A4 landscape for the table tent that folds in half, A7 (74 × 105 mm) for receipt stickers, and a 9:16 vertical sized for a phone screenshot. Your card color, logo, reward wording, and a working QR code are already baked in. Every template is available on the free plan, which covers up to 100 customers and 100 wallet messages a month.

Two things not to do. Do not screenshot the preview code at the top of the QR screen: it is tagged internally as a preview for scan tracking, and a screenshot from a laptop display prints at around 100 dpi. Do not open the export in a design tool to crop it, recolor the code, or drop it onto a photo, because each of those edits breaks something the scanner needs.

Waya does not connect to your till, and there is no hardware to install. That makes this sheet of paper the enrollment path, which is why where it sits is a real business decision and not a decorating one. If you run more than one branch, the QR screen gives you a separate code per branch and tags each sign-up to the branch it was scanned at, so print the right one at the right address.

Size the code for the distance, not for the page

One rule covers most failed posters: print the code at least one-tenth as wide as the distance you want it read from. A 30 mm code is a 30 cm code, which is fine in someone's hand and useless on a wall. This is a rule of thumb from the barcode trade rather than a hard specification, but phone cameras track it closely enough to plan around.

Waya's templates are sized to that rule. The A4 wall designs print an 80 mm code, reliable to about 80 cm. The table tent prints 55 mm, reliable to about 55 cm, which is roughly where a seated customer's face is. The A7 receipt sticker prints 42 mm and the tear-off tabs print 32 mm, and both of those are read at arm's length, so both are correctly sized.

The mismatch to watch for is a wall poster hung too far from where people stand. If the gap is more than a meter, an 80 mm code is underspecified no matter how bold the headline is. Print the same A4 file onto A3 with "scale to fit": A3 is 1.41 times A4, so the code grows from 80 mm to about 113 mm and the workable distance stretches to roughly 1.1 m.

Measure before you print. Stand where your customer stands, hold a tape measure to the spot the poster will occupy, and pick the size from that number. It takes a minute and saves a reprint.

The white border is not decoration

The QR standard (ISO/IEC 18004) requires a quiet zone: 4 blank modules of white on all four sides, a module being one of the small squares. A link the length of an enrollment URL lands at roughly 40 to 50 modules per side. On an 80 mm code that puts one module at about 1.8 mm, so the quiet zone is about 7 mm of clear white.

That is what the white box behind the code is in every Waya template. It is not a design flourish, and it is the first thing a well-meant edit removes. For the same reason, keep headlines, price stickers, and the edge of any photo out of that band.

On contrast, keep it dark ink on a white field. The templates that tint the code use your card color, which works when that color is dark, and the Waya default emerald reads fine. If your brand color is pale yellow, mint, or light gray, pick a black-code template instead. Do not invert to light modules on a dark background either: most modern phone cameras cope, some scanners still do not, and there is no upside.

Check your ink before a print run. A cartridge on its last legs prints gray modules instead of black ones, and gray is the difference between a code that reads in one second and one that takes four.

Four placements that work, and two that never do

The placements that earn scans share one trait: the customer is already standing still with a phone within reach. Waya's poster gallery filters by placement for that reason, with Wall, Table, Counter, Receipt, and Story as the options.

The counter, right where payment happens, is the best spot in the shop. The customer is stopped, waiting on a card machine or change, and 40 to 60 cm from the surface. A small stand at the register beats a large poster anywhere else in the room.

A table tent where people sit and wait is second. In a cafe, on a barber's waiting bench, or in a clinic, dwell time is the whole asset. The tent template prints two mirrored sides on one A4 landscape sheet, so it reads from both ends of the table.

The receipt, cup sleeve, or bag is third, using the A7 sticker. It goes home with the customer and keeps working for a day after the visit, which catches the person who was too rushed at the till. It is also the only placement that survives a queue at rush hour. Fourth is a wall sheet at eye level along the line people queue in, not behind the counter but in the line itself, because standing in a queue is dead time and dead time gets phones out.

Two placements look sensible and do not work. High on the wall behind the cashier is the first: above eye level, more than a meter away, lit by the spotlights that wash out any gloss finish, and often blocked by the person serving. The customer is facing your staff member anyway, not the wall behind them.

The outside window or entrance door is the second. Glass throws reflections that stop a camera from focusing, daylight makes that worse, and almost nobody stops on the pavement to enroll in a loyalty card at a shop they have not bought anything from yet. Spend that effort at the point of payment.

Print material: what to spend on and what to skip

Plain office paper at 120 to 160 gsm is fine for a wall sheet. You will reprint it when the reward changes, so do not laminate the first one. If you do laminate later, choose matte.

Gloss is the most common physical failure of all. A glossy finish or a glass frame under an LED spotlight puts a white blowout straight across the code, and the customer sees nothing for the camera to lock onto. Use matte paper, matte lamination, and no frame glass, or tilt the sheet a few degrees away from the light.

For a table tent, move up to 250 to 300 gsm card so it stands without curling in humidity. For the counter, an acrylic sign holder from any stationery shop outlasts tape on a surface that gets wiped down ten times a day. Tape on a wet counter lasts about a week.

Whatever you choose, print one copy first and scan it yourself. Then print the rest.

The wording above the code

The line above the code decides whether the code gets looked at. Name the reward, not the mechanism. "Your 7th coffee is free" outperforms "Join our loyalty program", because the first is something a person wants and the second is a task they have been handed.

Then remove the two objections people hold about QR posters. The first is time, which is why Waya's templates say "Scan to join — 5 seconds": stating the cost in seconds is what makes it feel free. The second is apps, so write "No app to download" on the sheet. That is the silent reason many people do not scan, and answering it costs you four words.

Give the code an instruction rather than a label. An arrow and an imperative work, which is why the templates use "← Scan" instead of the word "QR". The minimal template adds a three-step strip, Scan, Sign up, Earn, which tells someone the size of the commitment before they make it.

Four things to keep off the sheet: "Scan for more information", which contains no reward; your program's internal name as the headline; the word "loyalty" standing alone; and the URL printed under the code. Nobody types a link with a signed token in it, and it eats the space the reward should be using.

Test it before you print twenty

Press Print / Save PDF, print a single copy, and tape it in the exact spot it will live. A poster that scans on your desk is not evidence of anything.

Scan it with a phone that has never enrolled. Your own phone is already a member and will not show you what a new customer sees. Stand where the customer stands and do not lean in to help the camera.

You should land on a one-screen form asking for a first name and a mobile number, then a single button that adds the card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, with a web card as the fallback on anything else. If you get an error page instead, either the code was edited after export or the card is not published yet.

Last, check the light. Come back at the hour your shop is busiest, with the lights that are actually on at that hour, and look at the sheet from the customer's angle. Glare depends on time of day, and plenty of posters look perfect at 10 in the morning and disappear under a spotlight at 8 at night.