Digital visiting card: how it works and who it suits
What a digital visiting card is, how it is handed over in South Asia and the Gulf, and the trades where it earns its place fastest.
Read it →A printed card is handed over without explanation and works with a dead phone. A digital business card changes after it is given, counts who opened it, and collects the other person's details. Neither replaces the other; each does a different job.
Where paper wins
The useful question is which one does which job, so you can carry the right one and stop apologising for the other.
Nobody has to be taught how to take it. You hold it out, they take it. There is no moment where somebody has to find a camera app while you stand there.
It survives a bad signal and a flat battery. Trade fairs, basements, building sites, aeroplanes.
It is a physical object people keep. A card on good stock, printed properly, sits on a desk. A link does not.
It says you were prepared. Turning up with cards is a small signal, and small signals are what a first meeting is made of.
Where digital wins
It changes after it is given. New number, new title, new company. Everybody who has your link has the new one.
It counts. A tracked link is a short address of ours that sends somebody to your card and records that it was used. Hand a different one out in each place and afterwards you can see which place actually brought people.
It collects. The Stay in touch form asks for a name and a phone number, and you can add email, company and a message. Those people land on your People screen as a list that belongs to you.
It carries more than a card can. Services, a gallery, videos, opening hours, a map, testimonials, ways to pay, a promo code people tap to copy. All of it optional, all of it drawn only when there is something in it. Which of those matter depends on the job: a photographer leads with the gallery, a restaurant or cafe with the menu and the hours.
It can take the next step for you. With add-ons to Pro, people can buy from your store, get a ticket to your event with a QR code on their phone, or book a 1-on-1 session in their own time zone, all from your card.
It can be saved as a real contact. One press writes a full contact file into a phone: names in parts, every phone labelled, addresses, socials, your picture.
It keeps in touch after the meeting. This is the gap paper can never close. Anyone who opens your card from the code and saves it can get card notifications from you later, a nudge a few days on or news of a new role. Your wallet pass sits in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, can carry notifications too, and changes on their phone each time you publish an edit. With the WhatsApp add-on, the thank-you and the follow-up go out without you typing them. Pro is $0.99 a month.
The honest weaknesses of each
Paper goes stale the day you change anything, costs money per hundred, and tells you nothing about what happened to it.
Digital asks somebody to do one thing, scan or tap, before the exchange has happened. It depends on a phone being out. And a link with no thought behind it, a page with a name and nothing to press, is worse than a printed card, because at least the card can be filed.
Carry both, and join them with a code
The arrangement that works is a printed card with a QR code on the back that opens the digital one. The paper does the handing over. The code does everything the paper cannot.
Print the code once and let it open a tracked link rather than a bare address, so the box of cards in your drawer still works after you move jobs. There is more on that in the QR code guide.
None of this costs anything to try. Design once, download the PDF, take it to any printer, and keep the card on the web for the half of the job paper cannot do. Our guide to digital business cards sets out the whole picture, and the cheap cards page is honest about what printing actually costs.
A test for which to hand over
Ask what you want to happen next.
- You want them to ring you next week: paper, with your number large.
- You want them to see your work before they ring: digital.
- You want their details, not just to give yours: digital, because the form is the only half of this that collects.
- You are at a stall with forty people an hour: paper, and a code on a stand for the ones who want more.
Most weeks you will want both, so make your free card and put its code on the paper one.
Questions people ask
Is a digital business card taken seriously?
In most trades, yes, and in some it is now expected. The safest approach is to lead with paper and let the code do the rest, which reads as prepared rather than as a gimmick.
Do I need both to be the same design?
They share your details, so the words agree. The layouts are separate, because a card face and a phone screen are different shapes and a design that suits one rarely suits the other.
Can I see who opened my card?
You see how many, where each opening came from, and which code carried it. You see a person only when they choose to leave their details in the form. The privacy tab sets out exactly what is kept.
What does a digital card cost?
One card at your own address is free for as long as you want it. The paid plan and the add-ons, and what each one holds, are listed on the plans page.