Put your contact details in their phone.

This is the densest type here. Fill in less than you want to.

A vCard packs more data into a QR code than anything else on this site, and every field you add makes the grid finer and the minimum printable size larger. The temptation is to complete the form. Resist it.

A name, one phone number and one email produce a code that scans off a business card easily, from an awkward angle, in a badly lit bar. Add a job title, a website, a second number and a full postal address and you can end up needing most of the card just to make the code work, at which point you have a worse business card and a worse QR code.

Three rules that pay for themselves:

• Skip the address unless people genuinely need to post you something. It is the single most expensive block of text in the form.
• Use the shortest website form that works. example.com, not https://www.example.com/.
• If the code is going somewhere small, use a link instead. A link code pointing at your contact page scans far more easily and can be updated later.

Nothing you print can ever be corrected

Worth sitting with before a print run of five hundred cards. The contact record is inside the pattern, so a mistyped digit is permanent, a changed mobile number orphans every card in circulation, and leaving a company means the cards are now actively wrong rather than merely out of date.

If you change roles or numbers with any regularity, the honest answer is that a vCard code is the wrong tool and a dynamic link to a contact page is the right one. You repoint it and every card already in wallets starts working correctly again. The trade is that it needs a network connection and a page to land on, where a vCard works in an aircraft hangar with no signal.

Names, and why there are three fields

The format stores a structured name alongside a display name, keeping first and last separate so address books can sort and file you correctly. Fill in first and last and the display name is assembled for you.

Use the full-name field when the displayed version should differ: a professional suffix, a title that matters, a mononym, or a name that does not split neatly into two parts. Getting this right is the difference between appearing correctly in someone's contacts and appearing as a surname they cannot search for.

Setting a type on the phone (Cell, Work, Home, Fax) and email (Work, Home) costs nothing and makes the saved contact file properly instead of dumping everything into a generic bucket.

Where it beats every alternative

Business cards, conference badges, trade-show stands, email signatures, an office door, the back of a service van, a hotel concierge desk.

Its real advantage shows up exactly where typing is worst: a loud room, a handshake, a moving vehicle, someone holding a coffee in the other hand. Those are the moments contact details are exchanged and the moments they are most often lost, and this removes the transcription step entirely.

Frequently asked questions