Guide to Creating a GS1 Digital Link.

The fundamental aim of GS1 Digital Link is to enable anyone to find answers to their questions about the thing in front of them. By leveraging the capabilities of GS1 identifiers, particularly the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), businesses can enhance their online presence, reinforce customer loyalty, and boost supply chain transparency.

The true power of GS1 Digital Link is its flexibility. It enables connections to all types of business-to-business and business-to-consumer information and, by structuring GS1 identifiers in a very specific way, ensures that data can be extracted and used by numerous applications, from smartphone cameras to point-of-sale scanners.
 

A lot of flexibility is built into the GS1 Digital Link standard that allows you to create your URL in a way that makes the most sense for your business. You can add further levels of granularity by including additional attributes within the data string of the URL. This could consist of a product's batch and lot numbers or, for serialized products, an individual item code or serial number.

The structure of a GS1 Digital Link URL is carefully defined to allow your GS1 Identification Keys to be read from a 2D barcode or near-field communication (NFC) tag using a scanning device.

This guide will take you through these components and explain how the information is structured.

The Domain

We recommend setting up a subdomain of your brand wherever possible. Subdomains can be integrated with the Delivr service, capturing analytics whenever a consumer scans a GS1 Digital Link QR code. When creating a subdomain, it is recommended that you add an" id" prefix to your existing domain name.

The syntax would look like this: https://id.yourdomain.com/path/

The benefits of your brand subdomain name include the following:

• Consumers will be confident that the URL their mobile phone displays is owned by your brand and more likely to trust the link.
• You will have direct access to and ownership of any analytics captured by the website associated with your domain name, such as the frequency and locations at which the QR code is being scanned.
• Your domain name is a brand asset that can be transferred if your brand is sold or acquired. This means that 2D barcodes containing your GS1 Digital Link URL would not have to be reprinted.

GS1 Identification Key

After the domain, the other crucial element of your GS1 Digital Link URL is the GS1 Identification Key. GS1 Identification Keys give companies efficient ways to access information about items in their supply chains, and share this information with trading partners. For most businesses, this will be a GTIN (though other GS1 Identification Keys can be used). It is this unique number that links your physical product to the Internet. Most brands will already have GTINs allocated to their products, a significant portion of which will be encoded in EAN/UPC barcodes printed on the product itself. This same GTIN can be encoded in a QR code's GS1 Digital Link URL. The GTIN must be stored as a GTIN-14. For example, an EAN must be zero-padded.

GS1 APPLICATION IDENTIFIERS

GS1 Application Identifiers are prefixes used to define the meaning and format of data attributes. To ensure that GS1 Identification Keys can be recognized in a Web URL and used in offline processes such as point-of-sale systems, we need to structure the data using GS1 Application Identifiers. These two, three-, or four-digit numbers denote the following data piece.

The Application Identifier and its associated value is the second component of your URL. As highlighted by the example below, Application Identifier 01 would indicate that the next piece of structured data is a GTIN:

The syntax would look like this: https://id.yourdomain.com/path/01/05012345000008

Additional data attributes

The GS1 Digital Link standard also defines how to add additional data attributes such as batch numbers, serial numbers, expiry dates, measured weights, and more to the URL syntax. These extra data can then be captured and used by a scanning system.

In this example, we've included a batch number ABC123 using Application Identifier 10: https://id.yourdomain.com/path/01/05012345000008/10/ABC123

The GTIN is the primary identification key in the following example, followed by the batch/lot number and expiry date. The expiry date is added to the query string using the Application Identifier 17: https://id.yourdomain.com/path/01/05012345000008/10/ABC123?17=251230

While it does not matter in which order you provide additional attribute data, the GTIN must always come first, and date formats must always be YYMMDD.

For more detailed information on syntax, please refer to GS1 Digital Link Standard: URI Syntax.

LinkTypes and the concept of Resolvers add an extra layer of functionality to GS1 Digital Link. For instance, an application to request very specific types of content for a product tagged with a Digital Link, such as a health tracking application. Consumers can request nutritional information for a Digital Link tagged product with the link below. Notice the linkType part of the URL, which is the key to requesting specific information: https://id.yourdomain.com/path/01/05012345000008/10/ABC123?linkType=gs1:nutritionalInfo

GS1 Digital Link Compression

GS1 Digital Link compression transforms (shortens) the GS1 Identification Keys within the web address to make URLs smaller. The difference in size is enough to allow the compressed Digital Link carrier to be printed at significantly smaller sizes while still being decoded offline.

In the case where a link would look like this before compression: https://id.yourdomain.com/path/01/05012345000008/10/ABC123?17=251230

The link would look like this after compression: https://id.yourdomain.com/path/AQkeDhYgkCCNV4JGLnqrw

The DELIVR Platform supports the GS1 Digital Link format, which allows a single 2D barcode to provide point-of-sale functionality and act as a consumer-facing, web-based URL at the same time to drive a consumer experience. By adding standard GS1 Application Identifiers to DELIVR dynamic QR codes, you can configure support for a corresponding GS1 Digital Link. Adding on a redirection or Redirector rules allows any consumer who scans the QR code to be dynamically redirected to a rich product experience, providing additional value to the brand. 

Get started using the GS1 Digital Link with our dynamic QR code generator and tools, which lets you create a QR code with a complete and valid GS1 Digital Link.