The label is not competing with your salespeople. It catches the customer who came in on a Saturday when nobody was free, looked at four slabs and left — an enquiry that is otherwise invisible.
1What goes on the label
Four things, in this order of importance:
- The stone name, large. People photograph labels to remember them even when they do not scan.
- Material and finish — granite, quartz, polished, honed. This is the language customers use when they come back.
- The price per square foot, if you show prices. A label that hides it invites the question you will answer forty times a day.
- A sentence telling them what the code does.
The instruction is the part most showrooms leave off, and it is the part that decides whether anyone scans. “Scan to see this slab in your kitchen” gets used; a bare code looks like it is for stock control.
2Where to put it
Eye level, on the face of the slab or the A-frame, on the side people approach from. Not on the floor, not at the top of a two-metre slab, and not behind another slab in the rack.
Leave a clear border around the code itself. Phones struggle with a code that runs to the edge of a label or is stuck across two surfaces at an angle.
3Print it so it survives the yard
- Waterproof or laminated stock. Paper labels in a stone yard last about a week.
- Matte, not gloss — a glossy label under a spotlight is a mirror, and a phone cannot read a mirror.
- At least 3cm square for the code. Smaller works in perfect conditions and fails in real ones.
- Black on white. Coloured or low-contrast codes scan slowly or not at all.
4What the code should open
Not your homepage. A customer who scans a code on a specific slab and lands on a general website has been given a chore, and will not do it.
The code should open the page for that stone, with it already selected and the next action visible without scrolling. If the page asks them to find the stone again in a list, the label has wasted the only moment of intent you were going to get.
5How to tell whether it is working
Count scans per slab. Two weeks of data tells you things you cannot get any other way: which stones people are drawn to but never ask about, whether labels near the door outperform the ones at the back, and whether a price on the label increases or suppresses enquiries.
If scans are high and enquiries low, the problem is the page, not the label. If scans are near zero, the problem is placement or the missing instruction — and both are fixed with a reprint.