Please excuse me if this has been asked before. (search didn’t yield)
Can a user use Zappar to look at my visiting card which doesn’t have zapcode printed on it and still see the associated video or link?
Thanks
Hello!
Scanning with the Zappar app requires a Zapcode to unlock the AR experience - it does not use markerless AR. You can certainly use a tracking image that you have ‘trained’ to prompt an AR experience without a Zapcode on, but a Zapcode would still need to have been scanned beforehand to enable that to happen. Hope that helps!
Thanks for the info. So if I have a 100 page photo album, can a user scan the zapcode once and then see the associated content on every page (Using the different tracking image) without the need of scanning every time?
Is that possible?
Thanks
It’s not possible within the realms of good practice, I’m afraid.
If you wanted to move between different tracking images, you’d be having to create separate experiences each time and using deep links to navigate between each of those experiences. From a user point of view, this is time consuming and un-intuitive because each tracking image would take a prohibitively long time to load up, which removes a lot of the incentive for scanning numerous times in the first place.
For this reason, we don’t list the use of multiple tracking images with a single Zapcode as a feature. So for an example like a 100 page photo album, we’d say that a zapcode will need to be scanned each time for each specific page that’s being used as a target image - it’s a lot more stable and efficient to use that way 
.
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Remember though that a Zapcode can be veeeery small! You could put it near your page numbers or out of the way and still have it read. Why not just put a tiny code for each page?
James is right. Even if you used the coding I have in my ancient history competition I wouldn’t do more then 10 and even at that the 8 I did took a long time. For a 100 pages the file size would take forever to download. Maybe you can lead them in a cascading effect. Where they have to go from page 1 , 2 ,3. You could deeplink them and have the pages auto load the next one.
Steve
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I was chatting to George in the office regarding this and your Ancient History project was certainly what came to mind for both of us. Like you say, with 8 tracking images it does take a bit longer but it’s certainly manageable and you’ve got the ‘unlock’ card mechanic so there’s a pretty clear call to action for the user to follow.
But as you say, for 100 it’s a pretty difficult proposition.
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@donnav
Remember though that a Zapcode can be veeeery small!
Very good point, yes!
I think the creative challenge is really a balancing act between an initial aesthetic preference (e.g. wanting a photo album page to be ‘pure’ without a Zapcode/anything other than the photo itself) and ensuring users know that the experiences are accessible and are encouraged to get involved with them in an easy way.
The addition of a Zapcode means that (as long as you’ve made a clear call to action beforehand), the user is prompted to scan upon seeing the code on each page. AR is becoming a lot more normalized for sure, but it’s still not an instantaneous reaction for users to see an image and attempt to scan it. We cover a lot of this stuff in our ‘Three C’s’ approach, which is worth looking into in terms of best practice and making sure your users have the best chance of enjoying what you’ve created :).
As @stevesanerd points out, the lack of Zapcode means longer loading times - but there’s the additional issue of UI to consider. Scanning a Zapcode will trigger a loading animation on the user’s screen, so even if the experience is larger than normal, the user is alerted to the fact that an experience is about to ‘arrive’. Whereas using multiple tracking images doesn’t trigger this, so unless you create your own loading message/animation to keep users informed (as Steve did for his AH competition entry), they’re likely to see nothing appear and simply give up. Or in other words, if the user doesn’t know there’s something cool coming, why wait?
Asides from being able to make the Zapcodes pretty tiny, there’s also a range of options for customising the Zapcode in terms of colour and shape, so it fits in more with the aesthetic of the photo album itself. So it can be complimentary to the other content if added sensitively!
Hope that’s useful - make sure to show us how the project progresses, sounds a really cool use of the tech.
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