Counting taps and scans.

When you hand out leaflets or put a sign on a table, you don't know whether anyone looked at it. It used to be the same with cards and QR codes: you print them, hand them out and hope. A short address changes that, because every opening leaves a trace.

How the counting works.

On a card's chip and in a QR code I don't write the destination itself, but my own short address. When someone opens it with a tap or the camera, the short address records that it was opened and when, and then forwards the visitor straight on: to the profile, to Google's review window, to the menu or to the guide. The visitor notices nothing except the page that opened.

Because every card, every stand and every QR code gets an address of its own, each piece is counted separately. When the chip and the printed code on the same card carry two different addresses, you can also see how many were taps and how many were scans.

Why it matters to a small business.

A small business has no marketing department. It has a few cards, stands and codes, and not much time. A count per piece tells you which of them does its job and which just stands there.

What you learn from it.

A number on its own says little. The value is in the comparison. A few everyday examples:

• A konoba with stands on the tables. You see which stand is used and which sits in a corner where nobody notices it. Move it, and after a few weeks you see whether it helped.
• A menu with a QR code. You see at what time of day guests open the digital menu, so you know when it has to be right down to the last price.
• A taxi. You see whether passengers tap the card on the seat or prefer to scan it.
• Apartments. You see whether guests open the guide from every apartment, or whether in one of them the card sits where nobody sees it.
• Cards you hand out. You see whether the cards you gave out at a fair or a meeting brought anyone to your profile.

Two stands in one konoba.

Imagine a konoba with two review stands, one on the bar and one on a terrace table. After a month the numbers might show that the one on the bar is hardly touched while the one on the terrace gets used. The reason is probably simple: at the bar people stand and pay in a hurry, on the terrace they sit and have time. You move the stand from the bar to a table by the sea and watch what the next month brings.

Decisions like these are usually made on a hunch. With a count, you make them from what actually happens on your table, in your car or in your apartment.

What isn't recorded.

Openings are counted, not people. The short address doesn't know who opened it. It doesn't record a name, a phone number or an e-mail, it asks nobody to sign in and it leaves no cookies on the phone. When a guest holds their phone to a stand, their privacy stays theirs. That is also why they don't have to accept any cookie banner before they see the menu.

The count is an approximate picture, not a list of people. The same guest tapping a card twice counts twice. Someone who saves a profile to their home screen opens it directly afterwards, so those openings don't pass through the short address.

A card that can be re-pointed.

The short address has a second use. Because the card doesn't lead straight to the destination, the destination can change without a new card. When you get a website instead of a profile, or switch a stand from the menu to reviews, I only change where the short address leads. The counting carries on, and the card on the table stays the same. More on that in how an NFC card works.

Where it is used.

The number of taps and scans per card and per QR code comes with the NFC cards, stickers, stands, plaques, keyrings and menus I make. Whenever you like, I show you the numbers for each piece and we look at what they say together.

For a website there is something different: visitor statistics without cookies, which also show arrivals from AI tools. I write about them in the article on visitor statistics.