Business Cards Zone

Making It Easy to Be Memorable

Welcome to your business card information resource — helping you reach more potential customers and build brand trust. We’ll show you just how simple it can be to create a stylish template that makes you stand out from the crowd as an established professional.

This mini-site is also designed to give you need-to-know design tips, creative ways to maximize your business cards, and some interesting facts about them for a networking talking point.

What Is Business Card Maker?

Business Card Maker is a convenient branding tool, brought to you by global web tech company Namecheap. It is super easy to use — each click builds your design template in real-time. Within minutes, and no skills needed, you’ll have a stylish, professional looking template ready to order:

Add your company details.
Import your logo, or create a new one in no time with our free Logo Maker.
Choose the front and back design from a range of popular template options.
Edit your template to make it your own. From font style to colors and layout, play around as much as you like until you’re 100% satisfied.
Place your order and get free, tracked, worldwide shipping.

You’ll have a choice of 3 Pack amounts —100, 250 or 500. Pricing is lower than most major suppliers, and comes inclusive with quality add ons that many printers charge extra for, such as luxurious 16pt stock paper, matte or glossy finish, and UV coating.

Learn more about the features, compare industry prices, and get started with creating designs. There are zero charges until you’re completely happy with your template and place your order:

Business Card Maker

Why Business Cards?

Any healthy business, no matter what size, needs to be constantly on the lookout for new customers. Business cards are a tried and tested way of maximizing opportunities. It could be a scheduled meeting, a lucky networking encounter, or an unexpected conversation at a dinner party. Having a stylish card to hand out lets people know you’re a genuine professional, and makes sure they don’t forget you or your company.

Even if you mainly do business online — a great looking business card with each delivery is a great way to add a classy touch, so people remember your digital platform for their next shop.

Here is a list of creative ways to grow your customer base using business cards:

Appointments

Add the date and time to your card so customers have a convenient way to remember the appointment or meeting. It shows consideration and appreciation. You’ll also be strengthening brand recognition while reducing missed appointments.

Diplomacy

If a large percentage of your customer base speaks a different language, such as French-Canadians, show them you value their custom and respect their culture by printing one side of your card in their language.

Event Invite

If you’re having some kind of a networking event, add the attendance details to a batch of your branded business cards. Get creative and make the invite look really appealing, while including your brand logo and usual details on the other side.

Fridge Magnet

As many as 63% of people throw away a business card because they don’t need the service at that time. A fridge magnet attached to one side would be a great way for customers to reach for your services when needed. This would be an especially good idea if your business offers emergency services like plumbing, or for frequent purchasers like a hair salon or food takeout.

Loyalty Program

Keep your customers returning by giving them a discount coupon to join your Loyalty Program when they get their first order delivered. It would mean more when printed on a classy business card than just some code on a website.

Another idea, to boost in-store brand loyalty, is to divide the back of your business cards into four or six blocks, and stamp them each time the customer comes in for a purchase or appointment. On the final stamp they get a nice discount.

Map

Make it easier for customers to find your place of business by adding a Google Maps screenshot with the red arrow to one side of your card. This will be especially useful for smaller businesses that might be tucked away in a busy city.

Personalization

Particularly at events, having a business card with your photo will make sure you’re not forgotten in a sea of faces. The personal touch is really important for smaller companies building market presence, so you may even want to add four photos of your core team.

Referral

Give a couple of your cards to your best customers, so they can hand them out to suitable colleagues, friends, and family. You can then reward your ambassador customers with a discount for each person in their network that contacts you.

Sales Calendar

A marketing calendar is crucial. Leverage it even more by printing your annual discount sales on the back of your business card, so customers know when to make contact or logon to your website.

Testimonial

If you have a high profile customer, adding their testimonial to one side of your card will go a long way to adding credibility to you and your company. Even a top review by someone on Trustpilot would be a great way to instantly build brand trust. Social proof is highly important these days.

Likewise, if you’re a member of a trade association or have relevant accreditations, you could add the organization’s logo to your card. Trust icons, like Cruelty Free and Free Shipping, are proven to boost ecommerce conversion. Why not use them on printed cards too.

Design Need-to-Know

No matter how easy Business Card Maker is, you still need some fundamental know-how to create a business card template that’s modern, stands out for all the right reasons, and reflects your individual brand.

Keep these tips in mind to get the best results and prevent time wasting:

clarity

The main job of a business card is to give people fast access to your contact details. Adding too much info is going to make the card look cluttered and squashed. You also don’t want to have to reduce the text — anything smaller than 8pt will be a strain to read.

Likewise an overly busy design will take up too much space and be distracting. You want your business cards to look clean on the eye, with clear space for the info to stand out.

Also be sure to use a clear font. A handwritten cursive like script font may look stylish, but when sized small it’s hard to read.

Ultimately, any designer worth their salt will tell you to keep your template simple. Minimalism is both appealing and modern. By all means have an attractive color design, but keep it to specific areas so there’s clean space for the text, or only on one side of your card.

Consistency

The second most important job of any business card is to strengthen your brand presence. You want to convey you’re a quality company, and distinguish yourself from the crowd. Be sure to use the same design, colors and typeface for your branding across all channels, whether print or digital. Over time this will build a particular and unique look that customers will instantly recognize and associate with you.

Also make sure your business cards reflect the right style to fit the services you offer. As an extreme example, psychedelic colors and an edgy font certainly won’t project the right impression for a financial professional. There’s a reason why different industries choose specific colors. Learn more: How to Choose Awesome Brand Colors.

Caution

Keep in mind your business card is there to give you credibility. So it’s not a great idea to add your home number if there will often be kids screaming in the background, and you definitely don’t want to add your personal social details. Potential clients viewing Facebook or Instagram posts of you having a few too many drinks on a wild night out is not exactly going to do your professional appeal any favors.

Classic

Gimmicks, like circular business cards or a complex fold out, may seem like a good idea to get you noticed. But while they might raise a smile for a minute or two, they tend to get thrown away. There’s a reason business cards have a standard size — to neatly fit into a pile, and be unobtrusively carried in a pocket, wallet or purse.

Classic

Quality

Make sure you keep your business card pack in the original box or get a special holder, so they don’t become scruffy. The second tip is you’ll also want to go for a professional printing service that uses 16pt (350 gsm) stock paper, so your cards feel high quality and don’t bend easily.

We also recommend you don’t try DIY printing. Even if you have a great printer at home, the variations in template alignment and cutting will stand out like a sore thumb. Cheap and amatuer is certainly not the first impression you want your business to make.

Positioning

Make sure the text information on your template is at least 5mm from the trim edge, so it doesn’t get cut off or look squashed. There are other intricacies involved — like bleed, dpi (dots per inch), pixels, hex palette, file types, spot colors and the CMYK color model. But with our Business Card Maker you don’t need to worry about these potential pitfalls, it’s all done for you.

Finish

A matte finish works best on cards with lots of text, while a glossy finish looks great when there’s strong color design. Also bear in mind that many printers charge extra for high quality add ons, like UV coating (to prevent color fade), ink color amount, and paper thickness. Our tool gives you all these extras at no extra charge.

Check

Once you’ve given the order go-ahead for your template to be printed, refunds don’t apply because it’s custom made, it cannot be sold on to another buyer. So be sure to double check all your details are correct before placing an order.

Interesting Facts

Break the ice when you’re networking with some cool facts about business cards. You’ll also want to be up to speed on the etiquette points if you’re ever travelling to do business in these parts of the world:

A study by the Statistic Brain Research Institute found that 72% of people judge a person or company based on the quality of their business cards, while 39% even went so far as to say they wouldn’t want to work with a company if they were “cheap looking”.
As far as we know, the Chinese invented the first business card in the 15th century. Written in beautiful calligraphy on handmade paper, the purpose was to give people notice of an intended visit and gain acceptance. Around the same time, there is evidence that Germanic people used woodcuts as greeting cards.
The West started widely using what were known as ‘trade cards’ during the reign of King Louis XIV in the 1600s. These cards had miniature advertisements and a map. Then in the 1700s, trade cards became more stylish and were standard amongst the well-to-do. When calling on someone, you would hand your card to a servant, and only after it had been examined were you given entrance. It was also the done thing for men to leave their cards with every woman in the room when visiting a friend.

Then in the Victorian era, cards saw a rise in popularity amongst business owners as advertisements. Like this one:

In modern Japan, business cards (called ‘meishi’) are still an important part of their culture. Everyone has a batch on hand after leaving school, as they’re used socially too. They’re handed out using both hands, and title/rank is just as important as contact details. At a business meeting, they indicate an intention to move forward, so not having one would be a major spanner in the works.
In China, first present your own card before asking for someone for theirs. You should use both hands, with the text facing upwards. It would also be considered rude if you don’t take a moment to view an offered card before putting it away. And if you’re headed to China on a business trip, consider using red in your card design, as that’s considered a lucky number.
For most South Africans, business cards are to be handed out with the right hand, and when accepting one you should place it in a card holder instead of just putting it in your pocket. Taking a moment to comment on the card will earn you some points.
In the UK and US, business cards are handed out informally during business meetings. There are no set rules, and it’s fine to place the card directly in your pocket without looking at it. But if you hand out a card that isn’t reasonably stylish and clear at a quick glance, it will tend to do more harm than good at making an impression.
In Australia there are no formal rules, and it’s also not considered a big deal if someone doesn’t have a business card on hand.
A study found that people hold onto a color business card 10 times longer than non-color. But that’s not always true, because sometimes high-end sophistication is marked by understatement. You could say that in general adding some color design definitely increases appeal, unless you or your company are so high profile that all you need to get across are your contact details on luxurious stock paper.
In the US alone, over 10 billion business cards are printed every year. It goes to show that even in a digital world, business cards are an evergreen tool to grow your company.

Questions?

What is the standard size for a business card? What countries do you ship to and how long does it take? What are the template design options? Find answers to all these questions and more:

Business Card Maker