Recently, I attended a wonderful storytelling competition. I haven’t been networking much in person, and this was such a warm group at the National Speakers Association Oregon Chapter. What an inspiring group of speakers. I was so happy to be invited. It was such a spontaneous event I failed to grab my cards in case anyone asked. I was happy to meet several people I want to interview for my podcasts. They gave me their cards, and I followed up. I noticed a couple of things about a few of the cards.
- Their email was so tiny (6 pt type) that I needed glasses to read it.
- The website URL included the www, taking up precious space that could have been used for larger type sizes for readability.
- When I called one of the numbers, it was the typical robot voice from Google Voice rather than the person I was calling. I left a message assuming I hadn’t misdialed, but I wasn’t sure.
- A couple of them used their branded colors – good -but there wasn’t enough contrast to make their cards ADA-compliant for people with visual impairments (25% of the population).
You may want to consider these suggestions if you are printing business cards for those in-person events:
- Sometimes, when designing our cards online, the screen is way bigger than the card. Try to resize what you are looking at to the actual size of a business card.
- Consider running the colors through WebAIM’s contrast checker.
- Consider a QR code that goes directly to your contact page on your website or another way to easily contact you, see your latest offerings or make another call to action.