How to make an auction flyer and lot cards with QR codes

What the flyer has to say

Someone reading a flyer gives it a few seconds. In that time they need five answers, in this order:

• What is being sold. A headline in plain words ("Tools and machinery from a closing workshop", "Charity auction: 40 lots for the school roof"), not just the name of your organisation.
• When bidding closes. A day, a time and, if any of your buyers could be elsewhere, a time zone. If lots close one after another, give the time the first one closes. If bidding has not opened yet, say when it opens.
• Where to bid. The web address written out in letters, short enough to type, and a QR code that opens it. Some people will not scan; some phones will not read the code in bad light.
• Where and when to view, if the goods can be seen: address, days and hours.
• Who is selling. Your name and, for a charity or a club, what the money is for. People bid more readily when they know who is behind it.

What to leave off: the current price of anything (it is wrong by the next day), "ends soon" (soon for whom?), a list of every lot (the QR code is the list), and terms and conditions in small print, which belong on the auction site.

Layout: one headline, a few photos, the code at the bottom

A flyer that works from across a room has very few parts. The headline is the biggest thing on the page and fits on two or three lines. Below it, the closing time in the second-largest type. Then up to four photos of your best lots: the ones that make someone stop, not the most expensive. At the bottom, the QR code with "Scan to bid" beside it and the address underneath, because the bottom of a poster is where the eye ends up and where a hand holding a phone can reach.

Keep it to one accent colour on a white page. Dark text on white is readable in a window, under a café's lights and on a grey corridor noticeboard; a dark full-colour background costs a lot of ink and makes the QR code harder to read.

QR codes that scan

Most failed scans come from a code that is too small, too close to something else, or pointing at the wrong place. A few rules cover nearly all of it:

• Size it to the distance. A common rule of thumb is a code about a tenth as wide as the distance it is scanned from: 3 cm for a card on a table read at arm's length, 5 cm for a poster read from a step back, 10 cm or more for a window read from the pavement.
• Leave a clear margin. A QR code needs an empty border around it, about four of its own small squares wide. Text or a photo touching the code is the most common reason it will not read.
• Dark on light. Black or a very dark colour on white. Some phone cameras do not read a light code on a dark background, and a pale colour fails in dim light.
• Point it at the real address. The code should open the sale, or the lot, directly. A link shortener or a "dynamic QR" service puts a stranger's server between your poster and your buyer, and if that service closes or starts charging, every poster you printed points nowhere.
• One code per purpose. The poster's code opens the whole sale; a lot card's code opens that lot. Two codes on one flyer make people hesitate over which to scan.
• Test it before you print a stack. Print one copy, put it where it will hang, step back to where people will stand and scan it with two phones, one of them older. Then check that the page it opens is the right one and readable on a phone.

Lot cards and labels for a viewing day

If people can come and see the goods, the poster brings them in and a card beside each lot does the selling. A visitor standing next to a lamp they like should be able to bid on that lamp, from there, in under a minute. A card that works carries:

• a photo and the title as it appears on the auction site, so people know they have the right lot when the page opens;
• whether the lot is open for bidding or not yet, and when it closes or opens;
• "Scan to bid" and a QR code of that lot's own page, not the whole sale;
• the site's address in small print, for anyone who would rather type.

Four cards fit on an A4 sheet; cut them apart and stand them up or tape them beside each lot. For small items, a whole card is too much: a sticker label with the title and a QR code, on a common 21-to-a-sheet address-label sheet (63.5 × 38.1 mm), goes on the item, its box or its shelf. On a table full of small lots, give similar lots titles that tell them apart on the site, because the label carries the same title and nobody should bid on the wrong one.

Two practical points. Print the cards after the lots are final: a card for a lot you withdrew sends people to a page that no longer works. And keep a few spare blank labels and a pen for the lot that arrives on the morning of the viewing.

Where to put flyers up

A flyer works where people already stand still and where the goods mean something to them. Roughly in order of how much they return:

Lamp posts, fences and bus shelters are a different matter: flyposting is regulated, and in many places fined. Check the rules where you put it up, and ask the owner of any private wall or window first.

Take your flyers down the day after the sale closes. A poster still in a window three weeks later tells everyone who passes that you forget things.

Printing so it looks right

1. Print from the browser, at full size

   In the print dialog, choose A4, set margins to none, scale to 100% and switch off the browser's headers and footers, which otherwise add a date and a web address to the edge of every page. Check the first page in the preview before printing twenty.

2. Choose the paper for the place

   Ordinary 80–100 g/m² paper is fine for a poster behind glass or on a noticeboard. Lot cards that have to stand up on a table want thicker card, 160–250 g/m², if your printer takes it. Labels go on label sheets; on plain paper, print cut lines and cut them out.

3. Protect what goes outside

   A flyer outside needs a plastic sleeve or a matte laminate. Glossy laminate reflects light straight into a phone's camera and is a common reason a code in a window will not scan. Tape the poster inside the glass rather than outside, where rain and hands reach it.

4. Scan the printed copy

   Ink and paper change a code: a printer low on toner or a soft paper can blur the small squares. Scan the actual printed sheet, in its place, before you put up the rest.

5. Reprint when the sale changes

   If the closing date moves, or a second sale follows, reprint. The cost is a few sheets of paper; a wrong date on a poster costs bids and trust.

Knowing whether it worked

Paper is hard to measure, and that is fine. Two honest ways to tell: ask new bidders how they heard about the sale (when they collect, or in the thank-you message), and count how many people at a viewing day you saw scanning a card. If the poster in a window brought nobody, the window, not the poster, is usually the reason; move it to where buyers already meet.

The flyer is one part of the sequence. The people it reaches still need the reminder in the last two days, which a flyer cannot give; see how to promote an online auction for the timeline, and how to post auction lots on social media for the posts that carry the same lots online.

Questions