In the past, business owners would print out hundreds, if not thousands, of business cards, share them along with products, and hand them out to clients or potential buyers. While this was a great approach in many regards, technology soon caught up to give a better solution to the whole aspect of digital business cards.
Currently, they’re fairly popular, and more businesses are looking into them for a myriad of reasons. While they’ve been around for a few years, they’ve recently caught more wind as technology evolves. Here’s everything you need to know about digital business cards with professional design services.
What Is a Digital Business Card?
A digital business card is a file with your contact information in text or multimedia form. You can share it with other devices such as a computer or a mobile phone. Many people refer to them as electronic or virtual business cards. Simply put, it takes the concept of a physical business card and creates a digital version of it.
Many people tend to scan their physical business cards and share them with others. While it can be considered a form of a digital business card, a digital business card integrates a lot of interesting ideas to make them more viable. They’re more than just a static image and can offer a lot of advantages over their physical counterparts.
Creating a Digital Business Card
Collect The Information for Your Business Card
Before creating the business card, it’s important that you figure out what information you want on the card. It will do an excellent job of streamlining the process of designing the card and potentially reduce the number of changes you want to make down the line. If you don’t already have a brand identity, which color themes, logos, and fonts for your business already thought out and decided, make sure you do all of that first. You want all your material uniform and consistent, and your business card will follow the theme.
While they do carry a lot of unique features, digital business cards do the job of physical business cards, too, by listing all of the necessary information you’d want to present to any client or customer. These are some of the essentials you’d want to include:
- Your name
- Job title
- Tagline explaining what you do/offer
- Company
- Phone number
- General location
- Website links
- Social handles
- Save/Download button
- Share button
Adding Videos and Animation
One aspect where digital business cards compared to traditional business cards is that you can add all kinds of animations and videos. If your business belongs to a particular industry that many aren’t familiar with or you think it’s hard to explain your work in just words, a video or an animation could do an excellent job of elaborating your point.
This is also recommended for cutting down the amount of information on your card, as you have to be aware that you’re dealing with limited real estate on the actual card.
Creating A Custom Digital Business Card Design from Scratch
While there are numerous tools online that can make the process of creating a digital business card easier, you’re generally using templates that everyone might have. You also have a limited range when it comes to colors, fonts, and the flexibility of the design. It might not provide you with the same level of freedom you’d expect. The solution is to work with designers and developers to work on the business card instead.
Not only do you have the ability to create an original design, but you can truly make something that’s memorable, generates more leads for your business, and have a lot of freedom for creativity. The process can be daunting, considering there are numerous variables you need to figure out, but an experienced professional can make the whole ordeal simpler by collaborating with you for information. They do a great job of keeping you in the loop, so the whole project fits your vision.
How Business Cards Are Shared
While you can physically hand someone a printed-out card, how do you share a card that’s not tangible? Generally, people have a unique URL to their business card, a QR code that you can scan from either a screen or through a printed form, but it can also be shared through email as an attachment. While not the most common approach, you can also use NFC or near-field communication to share data. NFC is used heavily by payment services like Google Pay and Apple Pay for wirelessly transferring cash.
In the same way, you can transfer the digital business card to a potential customer or client. Unfortunately, many devices don’t have NFC features, which might make it a less feasible option to rely on.
The Advantages of Digital Business Cards
The main question that most people have is that when physical cards still exist and get circulated, is there any reason to invest in digital business cards? The answer is a resounding yes, and these are some of the major benefits of using a digital business card:
Adaptable
While people spend a lot of time figuring out various details before printing out their physical business cards, it’s common for the initial print to not be satisfactory. Typos, outdated information, and poor design can lead to you losing out on a large amount of money, and you spend more as you make changes and repeat the process. With a digital business card, you can make changes on the fly and update the information to keep it accurate and relevant at all times.
You can also upgrade the design and make more changes to it.
Integration With Contact Lists
Many people will throw away physical business cards before they save your details somewhere. With a digital business card, your contact details are saved in their contacts list immediately. Instead of them having to make the conscious decision of entering your data into their contact list, you can send them a formatted version of all your updated information directly to them. It’s much more effective to give people your details in a way that they’ll hold onto them.
Clickable Links
Many people list their various social media handles on their physical business cards. It’s a hassle for many to enter a username, especially if it’s a hard-to-spell name in the search bar. In many cases, search bars can be a bit broken and not return your account in the top searches. With a digital business card, you can add a link to all the social accounts so that anytime they click on any of your social links. They’ll be led to the page immediately. It’s a smarter way of generating more leads for your accounts and business.
Save Up Money
While you may end up spending a bit of time and money on designing a digital business card with a professional designer, you save up on printing costs. The bulk cardstock printing expenses might not be feasible for everyone, and it’s common for business owners to either run out of cards or have too many cards just lying around that they don’t use.
Not having to print out business cards is a great way of saving up a lot of money. You essentially have an infinite number of cards, considering you can share the same link with anyone as often as you’d like.
Easier To Share
It’s easier to share a digital business card than a physical one. Suppose you’re in a meeting on Zoom and someone requests your contact information or wishes to learn more about your business. Rather than having to individually list your personal information or send any social handles, you can send them your digital business card. All of the information that you need to convert a curious individual into a client is available using your business card.
Conclusion
Having a digital business card is a great way of keeping people informed about your business, allowing others to access all of the information they need simply. It’s much more effective than a physical business card and is a cost-effective approach for better marketing.
Work With Custom Design Services in Miami
A digital business card is a must-have in the modern era, especially as people maintain a majority of their correspondence through digital means. The NetMen Corp has been in the industry for over 20 years, helping businesses make the most of digital resources to grow.
Our business offers a range of corporate design services in Miami and to various clients located across the globe. We have numerous services like social media post design, custom web design, digital illustration, packaging, and many other online and graphic design services. Reach out to us today to start working on your designs.
