Designing a business card can be an exciting but daunting task. It’s always fun to get a fresh start on something, especially your branding.
But what exactly should you put on your business card?
The answer is: it really depends on what you think is important. A lot of people tend to put everything they possible can. Less is really more when it comes to business cards. You only have about 5-10 seconds to capture somebody’s attention with a card. If it’s flooded with information, their brain does not know how and what to process. In the end, very little if any information is retained.
We have our biased opinion, but it’s easier to tell you what to avoid in your business card design. This is not meant to shame anyone if you put these things on your business card. It’s just our opinion based on what we’ve seen. You do you.
@emailprovider.com Email Addresses
This really shouldn’t be a thing anymore, but unfortunately it is.
If you have a company, there is no reason you shouldn’t have an email address at your own domain name. What’s even worse is when the company has their website on their business card and still puts a @emailprovider.com email address. Saving some money by using a free email provider is pinching pennies, but it could cost you lots of dollars.
The reality is that if you’re trying to portray yourself as any type of professional, you should look professional. Invest some money in yourself and in your branding.
Fax Numbers
Let us preface this with: there are a few exceptions; like if fax is a integral part of your business, for whatever reason.
For the most part, people don’t really fax anymore. When scanning became a thing, faxing was already on its way out. You simply scan your document and send it via email – everyone has email.
Now, there are even apps that can simulate a machine photo scan. Google has a great app called PhotoScan which lets you “scan” a document by using your smart phone’s camera and cross referencing 4 different points to get the best alignment. From there, you can email it directly to the recipient.
Multiple Websites
You should really only have 1 website domain on your business card. It should be short, simple, and easy to remember. Single word domains are great, but really hard to come by these days. Just try your best to keep it minimalistic.
Don’t include your website and another separate portfolio website. For example, we wouldn’t include www.legitprint.com and blog.legitprint.com.
Firstly, this doesn’t look super professional. Secondly, your primary website should be the capture point to redirect visitors to your other relevant URLs. You have to ask yourself “are people really going to type that URL that looks something like this myname.portfoliosite.com?” The answer is probably not.
Most people default by typing a key phrase into a search bar. And if you’re not the first result, then that defeats the purpose. Take away the pain points for people to find you.
LinkedIn URLs
LinkedIn used to have super long profile URLs. Since then, they have shortened them a lot, and they don’t look half bad.
That being said, the bottom line is that people are still not going to type that URL in. It’s best to put your username next to a LinkedIn icon. This brings us to our next related point.
Social Media URLs
You might be wondering how this is different from LinkedIn URLs. The answer is that it isn’t and it is.
We’ve seen so many people include LinkedIn URLs as as substitute for lacking a website domain. Newsflash: it looks bad.
Your best bet is to try to have all your social media accounts under 1 username/handle. For example, we’re @legitprint on every social media platform. So if we were to include it on our business card, it would look something like this.
If you can’t get the same handle for all social media platforms, then you should ask yourself which one you’re most active on and stick to that one.
Take all of these business card omissions with a grain of salt. Everyone’s case is different, and if you really feel like something should be on your business card, then by all means, go for it. But if you have a paragraph of information on your business card, you better have one hell of a personality to make a good first impression!
Happy designing ya’ll!
If you need help with business card design or logo design, reach out to us at info@legitprint.com.