QR code analytics dashboard: what every metric actually means

Two views of the same data

goqr.info's dashboard gives you two ways to look at your QR analytics:

1. Aggregate view — every metric, summed across all your QR codes. Best for the question "how is my whole QR program doing?"
2. Per-link view — opens when you click the 📊 button next to any URL. Best for the question "how is this specific QR doing?"

Both views show the same four sections: KPIs, daily trend, breakdowns (devices / countries / cities / browsers), and recent activity. The numbers in the aggregate view are sums; in the per-link view they're scoped to one URL.

The four KPIs at the top

The daily trend chart

The big line chart shows clicks per day over the selected range (7, 30, or 90 days). Three patterns to recognize:

Steady baseline

A flat line with small daily fluctuations = your QR is in steady use (table sticker in a café, packaging on a product). This is the most common pattern for evergreen QRs.

Campaign spike

A sharp peak on one or two days = a campaign push (social post, email blast, event handout). Compare the peak height to your baseline to measure campaign lift.

Decay curve

A high opening day followed by a long slow drop = the typical content-launch pattern. The "half-life" of your decay (days to 50%) tells you how long your content stays interesting.

Devices: how do they scan?

Three categories: Mobile, Desktop, Tablet. For QR codes specifically, Mobile should always dominate — typically 80–95% of total. If you see significant Desktop traffic, it usually means:

• Someone forwarded the short URL via Slack/email instead of scanning the QR
• The QR is being clicked from a screenshot or PDF
• Bot or crawler traffic

None of these are bad — but they're worth knowing about when designing campaigns. If a poster QR shows 40% Desktop, your offline-only strategy has leaked into someone's Slack channel. That's free distribution; lean into it.

Countries: where in the world?

The Countries panel shows the top 5 countries by click count, with a bar chart of share. Use it for:

• Audience confirmation — is your QR finding the geography you targeted?
• Surprise markets — sometimes you'll see clicks from countries you don't sell to. That's a market validation signal.
• Detecting bot traffic — if 30% of your clicks come from a country with no business reason, double-check whether they're real people.

Cities: the underrated panel

The Cities panel is the highest-resolution geo data you get. For local businesses, this is where decisions actually live:

• Print packaging campaign showing 40% Bangkok, 18% Chiang Mai → you know which two cities to open pop-up stores in next.
• Restaurant menu QR showing 95% local + 5% scattered international → you have a tourist audience to design specifically for.
• Event QR showing distribution across 20 cities → you have a national reach worth pitching to sponsors.

Browsers: a smaller signal, occasionally useful

Mostly informational. The browser breakdown (Safari / Chrome / Samsung Internet / etc.) confirms your traffic comes from real human devices. Two practical uses:

• Detecting old hardware — if a meaningful chunk uses very old browsers, your landing page UX should degrade gracefully.
• Comparing iOS vs Android share — Safari ≈ iPhone, Chrome (on Android) + Samsung Internet ≈ Android. iOS/Android split affects which features you can ship on the destination page.

Recent clicks: the qualitative window

The Recent clicks list (last 8 events) is one piece of qualitative data hidden among the quantitative ones. For each click you get:

• The city + country
• The device + browser
• The exact timestamp

Used well, this is your real-time pulse. Scrolling through it for 30 seconds tells you what kind of audience is showing up right now. Useful while monitoring a launch, an event, or a fresh campaign.

How to pick a date range

The 7 / 30 / 90 day toggle changes everything below it. Rules of thumb:

• 7 days — for daily monitoring, campaign weeks, real-time launches
• 30 days — the default, balances signal and noise
• 90 days — quarterly reviews, long-term trends, seasonal patterns

Workflow: how a marketer actually uses this

A typical weekly check-in:

1. Monday morning — Open aggregate dashboard. Glance at total clicks vs last week. Note any surprise.
2. Drill into Top Links — Identify which QR drove the change.
3. Open that link's 📊 modal — Confirm in the daily trend whether it was a one-day spike or sustained growth.
4. Check Cities — If the spike was concentrated in one city, you have a story to tell the regional team.
5. Compare devices — Mobile-only? Or did Desktop traffic appear (suggesting digital forwards)?
6. Decide what to do — Boost the winner? Investigate the surprise? Cut the under-performer?

Total time: 5 minutes. Insight quality: dramatically better than vanity metrics from a free generic QR generator.

What you don't get (and why)

Some things QR analytics deliberately don't track:

• Identifying individuals. Unique = unique IP. We don't fingerprint users or share data with third parties.
• Exact street addresses. Geo data goes to the city level — never an address.
• What people did after the scan. Once they leave the redirect, they're on your destination site. Hook up your site's own analytics (Plausible, GA, Fathom) for that.