Go Pro

Solutions · Retail shops

Window, shelf edge, hang tag, till

The retail playbook the big platforms sell you opens with a Shopify integration and an SMS budget. This one opens with the four surfaces a two-person shop actually owns — the window, the shelf edge, the hang tag and the counter next to the till — and with the retail barcodes most generators put behind a paywall.

38 barcode symbologies, 37 QR types and every export format are free here. EAN-13, EAN-8, UPC-A, UPC-E, Code 128, Code 39, ITF-14, ISBN, GS1 DataBar, Data Matrix, PDF417 and Aztec all come out as vector SVG or PDF, ready to drop into label artwork.

Open the barcode generator Open the print templates

The jobs, and the thing you make for each

Every card names a real tool on this site. Where something needs a paid plan, the card says which one.

  • Job 1

    A window poster that survives the promotion ending

    Print a code with the sale URL inside it and the poster dies with the sale. A dynamic code holds a short qrcodeharbor.com address; you repoint it from your account when the promotion changes, and the poster in the glass stays put. The A4 window poster is drawn at 210 × 297 mm and stays readable from about two metres at that size. A free account keeps 2 dynamic codes forever, and repointing them is free on every plan.

    What you make Dynamic QR codes
  • Job 2

    Hang tags, shelf edges and the counter

    The 70 × 40 mm product label and the 90 × 90 mm counter sticker are already the right size, with the quiet zone built in. Small codes are the unforgiving ones: fewer characters means fewer, larger squares, so a short URL is worth more than a clever one at 25 mm. Every layout is rasterised and decoded in your browser before the download unlocks — a label that would not scan never becomes a file.

    What you make Print templates
  • Job 3

    The barcodes most generators charge for

    The web barcode tool renders all 38 symbologies at no cost and with no account: retail EAN and UPC, Code 128 and Code 39 for internal SKUs, ITF-14 for outer cases, ISBN for books, GS1 DataBar for loose produce, and Data Matrix or PDF417 where the space is tiny. Output is vector, so the same file works on a 20 mm swing tag and a shipping carton. We draw the barcode; we do not issue the number — an EAN or UPC that will scan at another retailer’s till has to be a GS1-allocated number you own.

    What you make Barcode generator
  • Job 4

    Asking for the review at the till

    A review funnel is a page we host at qrcodeharbor.com/rf/your-slug. A customer taps a rating: at or above the threshold you set they go to your public review link; below it, a private form opens that only you can read. Five funnels come with any signed-in account, on any plan. Print it on the A5 review stand card and stand it where people wait for the card machine.

    What you make Review funnel builder
Worked example — invented, not a customer

Anchor & Oak, a two-person homeware shop

An invented shop, written out to show which codes should be dynamic and which should not. Nothing here is a customer or a measured outcome — it is a sequence of clicks and the plan each one needs.

  1. One dynamic code for the window, pointed at whatever is currently on offer. That is 1 of the 2 slots a free account keeps.
  2. Print it on the A4 window poster as a vector PDF, so the shop across the road printing it at A2 next month costs nothing extra.
  3. Shelf codes go static, straight to the product page. Static codes are unlimited and cost nothing, and a product page outlives the product, so there is nothing to repoint.
  4. Generate the EAN-13s for the own-label range from the GS1 numbers you already hold, as SVG, and drop them into the 70 × 40 mm label artwork.
  5. Build a review funnel with the threshold at 4, and stand the A5 card by the till.
  6. The sale ends. Repoint the window code at the new arrivals page — one field, no reprint. The second dynamic slot is still spare for the Christmas campaign.

What this costs

Nothing about file type, resolution or print quality is ever the paid part here. What the paid plans add is scale — more codes that can be repointed, longer history, and alerts when something breaks.

No account

Free

  • All 38 barcode symbologies and 37 QR types, drawn in your browser
  • Vector SVG, PDF and EPS plus PNG and JPG to 4096 px — no watermark
  • All twelve print templates, decode-checked before the download unlocks
  • Unlimited static codes — they use no slot and never expire

A free account

Free

  • 2 dynamic codes kept forever — the window and one spare
  • 500 scans a month counted; the day-by-day chart covers 30 days
  • 5 review funnels for the till
  • A destination check when the code is scanned, at most once every six hours, plus a Check now button

Pro

$9.99/mo or $95/year

  • 50 dynamic codes — one per range, per campaign, per window
  • Batches of up to 100 codes from a list or CSV, downloaded as one ZIP
  • Pause a seasonal code, set an expiry, or password-protect a trade page
  • A year of day-by-day history, and 15 saved designs

Business

$39/mo or $348/year

  • 500 dynamic codes and three years of history
  • Bulk generation through the API, up to 1,000 static codes per request
  • A check every six hours, and an email when a product URL stops answering
  • The developer API

The things that actually go wrong on a shop floor

In the order they cost money.

  • A barcode number is not a barcode image. We render any of the 38 symbologies for free, but an EAN or UPC only scans at someone else’s till if the number itself was allocated to you by GS1. Generating the picture is the easy half.
  • Small codes punish long URLs. At 20–25 mm on a swing tag, every extra character shrinks the squares. Encode the shortest thing that works — a dynamic code’s short URL is usually shorter than the product page it points at.
  • Keep the quiet zone. The pale band around a code is not margin, it is part of the symbol. Guillotining into it is the most common reason a printed label stops scanning.
  • Print one and scan it on the real stock, in the shop’s own lighting, with the oldest phone you can find. Gloss laminate and dark backgrounds fail in ways a monitor never shows you.
  • We notice a dead destination. On Business, every dynamic code is checked every six hours whether or not anyone scans it, and you get an email if it fails twice in a row. On every plan the check also runs when someone scans, at most once every six hours, and whenever you press Check now — this is what a scan does and does not record.
  • A dynamic code depends on us; a static one does not. The short qrcodeharbor.com address is only a working code for as long as this site answers it. That is the real trade for being able to repoint it, and it is why the WiFi, vCard and calendar codes on this site stay static — those need nobody. The honest version of “never expires”.

Pages worth having open while you set this up

All of these are tools and guides on this site.

Start with the window

It is the one surface that changes most and the one that is most annoying to reprint. Make it dynamic once and it is the last time you print that poster for a reason other than wanting to.

Open the barcode generator See what the paid plans add