Do you remember the scene in American Psycho where the 80’s Wall Street yuppies show each other their business cards? The razor-edged tension as they each proffer their cards, with each subtle difference in font causing Patrick Bateman to tremble. When the Vice President’s card is revealed to have a watermark, Bateman almost has a breakdown.
American Psycho is a 2000 film that satirises the 80s, and it captures the intense significance placed on business cards in this era. It’s funny because in the new millennium, they’re more of a marketing novelty than a real cornerstone of personal branding.
Why don’t we see as many business cards these days? Well essentially we do, but they are made of HTML not cardstock paper.
The business website is the new business card. However, most websites don’t realise this, and they have a design flaw that is wasting so many potential customers.
The online business card: a physical emblem of your business
The first of the two functions of a business card is as a physical emblem of your business. It demonstrates that you are professional and serious through the use of tasteful, minimal styling and formatting.
It is a ‘face’ for your business, but now there is a new, larger, multimedia face—the business website. The business card is no longer a main face of the business; it is now only an honourable token given to select clients.
What is the benefit of a website over the business card? It is far more expansive and immersive. You can tell stories, share images and videos. And, it is far more wide-reaching and affordable. Imagine if Patrick Bateman was shown a business website; he might have murdered the Vice President.
The business website: a card with your business details
Now the second of the two functions of a business card—the more straightforward function—is that it just contains your business details. It concisely displays your name, phone number, opening hours, etc. in a way that someone seeking your services can skim, pick up the phone and ask you for a quote.
This is the function that websites too often neglect. They don’t think of themselves as the business card 2.0. They make these key business details too hard to find.
The typical website has your logo and hopefully your phone number at the top. That’s a good start, but what about your email, customer rating, opening hours and address? They’re scattered all over the place. The visitor must rifle through your navigation menu and open up several pages to get all these key points of info. It’s one of the most absurd web design flaws, and almost every website has it. And the sad thing is, it causes your business to lose potential customers.
A new element that all websites should have (for websites to be better ‘business cards’)
The benefit of a website is that it’s larger and more immersive than a business card. The downside is that it’s more complicated. The visitor can find it hard to find the simple, vital details. But there is an elegant way to get the best of both worlds.
You need a business card embedded on your homepage.
When people come to your website homepage, they will see the usual impressive layout, but they will also see a simple straight-to-the-point box containing all the details that they are looking for. Here is an example:
This is what we call the Infopanel, and it’s a vital feature of every site that we make. It’s such a simple feature, and yet you will wonder why it’s missing on almost all sites, including yours.
While it does has the stylish simplicity of a business card, it also has cutting-edge code behind the scenes. We create these Infopanels using ‘Schema structured data’, which allows Google Search to read your business details, and display them in Google searches. Have you ever found a local business using Google Maps? An Infopanel will allow Google to put your business into Google Maps, and various other Google Search services.
Infopanels are a feature of a new kind of website that we have invented. It’s called a Jetsite, and it has the simple directness of a business card. Click here to see what it looks like.