Business cards play an important role in networking and building connections. They are a quick way to share your contact information professionally. According to Credit Donkey, in the US alone around 27 million business cards are printed each single day. However, traditional business cards can get cluttered with too much information.
Both people and professionals prefer clean designs. That is the reason you see these codes on business cards today. By adding such a code to your business card, you can share much more than just your phone number or email address. In this blog post, we will explore how you can benefit by adding QR codes to your business cards.
What Are QR Codes?
QR codes aka Quick Response Codes – they are specialized barcodes that store information and links inside them. People can scan these codes using mobile cameras or online tools to quickly access the information.
Why Add them On Business Cards?
There are many reasons you should add QR codes on business cards. Some common among them include:
1. Instant Access to Information
With a quick response code, people can instantly access your website, portfolio, or the information you embed inside. This means there’s no need to type anything. All people need is to just scan and go.
2. Saves Space on the Card
Business cards are small, but the codes can store a lot of information. Having too much information on the card can ruin the design. But now you don’t have to cram in all your details. Code will do the job.
3. More Professional Look
Quick response codes make your card look modern and tech-savvy. It shows you’re keeping up with trends and adds a creative touch.
4. Better Networking Experience
Instead of manually entering your contact information, people can save it in seconds. This makes it easier for them to follow up with you.
How to Add These Codes to Your Business Card?
There are various online tools available that let you generate a quick response code for free. Some designing tools like Canva also offer built-in tool that let you generate them. Let us demonstrate the process to you so you’ll have no confusion left in mind.
Suppose, you are designing your business card in Canva. Simply, visit the Canva QR code generator tool. Upon landing on the page, all you need to do is to click on “Generate a QR Code”.
Upon clicking on the button Canva will ask you for two different options i.e., Use in existing design or Use in new design.
If you already have your card designed, open it by clicking on “Use in existing design”. Otherwise, click on “Use in new design”. If the design is new, it’s better to first design the card.
Once you have your card ready, scroll down in the toolbar on the left side. At the very bottom, you will see a button “QR code.” Clicking on it will open the tool in front of you.
Now, paste the link that you want to add as a code on your business card and hit the generate code button.
The tool will generate a 2D code for your link in seconds that you can use on your card by dragging and dropping like we did for a business card in the below image.
Unfortunately, Canva only generates codes for URLs. If you want to make a quick reponse code from the text manually, you can find various other free options. We don’t like sharing information left hanging. Let us show the process of generating such codes from the text as well.
Generating QR Code from Text
As we told you earlier, you’ll find various free options online that let you convert text into a 2D bar-code. All you need to do is simply search for “Text to QR code” online.
To demonstrate to you we are going to use one such tool i.e., Genqrcode. Simply, visit the tool and choose “Text” among various options.
Upon choosing the Text option you’ll see a Text Input box at the bottom. Simply, write or paste the text inside this box for which you want to generate a code and hit the Generate button.
The generated code will appear on the right side which you can download in various image formats and embed into your business card. But don’t forget to test the code before embedding.
Testing the Code
Sometimes the generated QR is not correct. There can be some glitches. Or sometimes it becomes so complex that it becomes hard to scan. So it is always advisable to scan and test before you add it onto any design.
To test whether the generated QR working code is working or not, use online tools. One such QR code scanner tool is there by Minifier. It’s a free tool with no limitations.
Simply, go to the tool and upload the image of your code. You can also scan the code by using a smartphone camera. To show you, we are going to upload the code we generated in the previous section, and here are the results we got.
As you can see in the right box, the tool has perfectly extracted the information that we embedded into it. This means that the code is correct and can be embedded into the business card.
Closing Thoughts
QR codes offer a smart way to keep business cards clean while sharing more information seamlessly. By adding a simple scannable code, you can create a modern and efficient networking experience that stands out from cluttered traditional designs.
