A digital business card website that opens in a tap
A digital business card is a single phone screen: who you are, what you do and three or four buttons to reach you. It opens when someone scans your QR code or taps your NFC card, so it has to load quickly on mobile data and make sense in five seconds. Anticode builds that screen as a plain, script-free page you can put on your own domain.
How the card reaches a phone
Paper cards get lost; a digital one travels as a link. The link usually reaches the other person in one of three ways, and each one shapes the page.
- A QR code printed on a paper card, a lanyard, a stand at an event or the last slide of a talk. The camera opens the link in the phone's browser.
- An NFC tag inside a plastic or metal card, a sticker or a phone case. The tag stores a web address; a recent phone held near it offers to open that address. Nothing else is stored on the tag, so the website is the card.
- A plain link in an email signature, a chat or a social profile.
In all three cases the person is standing up, possibly mid-conversation, on a phone. That rules out long pages, pop-ups and anything that needs to load a heavy script before showing your name.
What goes on one screen
Treat the first screen of a digital business card website as the whole card. Anything below it is a bonus.
- Your name and a photo. A clear head-and-shoulders photo helps people remember who they met. A logo alone doesn't.
- Role and organisation. "Structural engineer, Halden & Rowe" rather than a tagline.
- Contact buttons. Call, email, message and a map link if people visit you. Big enough to hit with a thumb.
- One link that matters most. Your booking page, your portfolio or your company site.
- Optional extras below the fold. A two-line bio, office hours, and the social profiles you actually use.
Leave out a full CV, a contact form with six fields or a gallery. If you need those, link to a personal website instead of squeezing them in.
Building the card in Anticode
Describe yourself in a sentence: "a digital business card for Mara Okafor, a wedding florist in Leeds, with call, email and Instagram buttons". The Architect checks the few things that change the result, such as which button should come first and whether you want a photo, and the design engine lays out a short landing page. Pick a design system that matches how you'd want a paper card to look: Swiss or Technical for a consultant or engineer, Luxury for a stylist or jeweller, Organic for a florist or a garden designer. One action colour is used for the buttons, so they read as buttons.
Use the visual editor to tighten the wording and reorder buttons. The design gate checks that the page has a phone viewport, a visible keyboard focus and alt text on your photo before it can be published, which also happen to be the things that make a card usable.
Saving it to the home screen
Every published Anticode site has a web app manifest and icons, so it can be installed to a phone or desktop home screen and opens with an offline fallback if there's no signal. For a business card that's useful for you more than for the people you meet: keep your own card on your home screen and you can show it, or hand your phone over, without searching for the link.
Use an address you control
Once a QR code is printed or an NFC tag is written, the address on it is fixed. If that address belongs to a card service you later stop paying for, every card you've handed out goes dead. Publish the page to your own domain (on a paid plan, connected by a CNAME or TXT record with the certificate issued automatically), for example card.yourname.com. You can then change everything on the page, or even move it elsewhere, without reprinting anything. See connecting a custom domain.
Page views per day, by source, show up in the dashboard without cookies, so you can see roughly how often the card gets opened after an event.
What it doesn't do
- No "save contact" file generated for you. Anticode doesn't create a vCard (.vcf) download. Many people simply tap the email or phone button and save the contact from there.
- No QR codes or NFC tags. Make the QR code in any generator and buy tags from a card supplier; write your page's address to them.
- No per-scan tracking. You see page views and sources, not which person scanned which card.
- No contact exchange. Some card apps collect the other person's details in return. Add a short contact form if you want that, but keep it optional.
Questions people ask
Do people need an app to open a digital business card?
No. A QR code opens in the phone's camera and an NFC tag in the browser. The card is an ordinary web page.
Can I change my details after printing QR codes?
Yes. Edit and republish the page; the address on the code stays the same, so every printed code shows the new details.
Will the badge show on my card?
Free sites carry a small "Made with Anticode" badge; paid plans don't, and they also let you use your own domain. See pricing.