What is a Barcode?

A barcode is a series of black and white spaces, usually lines, scanned by a barcode scanner or cell phone app to convey a small amount of information. Barcodes are mostly used on retail products for pricing at the checkout and stock-control. They ensure that the entire process is efficient. Barcodes used in retail are either EAN-13 numbers or UPC-A numbers represented as an image. These numbers are linked the the products in the store’s system.

Retail barcodes do not encode information. They are globally unique numbers that when scanned bring up the number on the barcode which can then be linked to a product in a retailers’ database.

There are many types of barcode all designed for different purposes. Get your barcodes right with us.

See here for

retail barcodes

carton code barcodes

book barcodes (ISBN) 

magazine barcodes (ISSN)

asset barcodes (code 128 and code 39)

What’s the difference between a QR code and a barcode?

QR code (“Quick Response codes”) are not used at checkouts for pricing or stock-control. They can contain more information but are more often used for marketing than tracking. When scaned a QR code can do a variety of things like go to a webpage, send a text, send an email, bring up personal contact details (V-business card) or track number. Most often QR codes are used to link the user to a chosen webpage and automatically add contact or event information into the cell phones records. Please let us know what information you would like encoded when proceeding with your order. Alternatively, if you have questions about the information that can be encoded, please contact us.