What to put on a digital business card: a checklist, with five complete examples

Your name, a photo, what you do and where, one or two ways to reach you, the few links people actually use, and one thing that shows your work. Everything else has to earn its place.

A digital business card has far more room than paper, and that is the trap: it can hold everything, so people put everything on it. The person reading it gives it a few seconds. What follows is a checklist for those seconds, then five complete example cards with the reasoning behind each one.

Build it while the list is fresh: start your card at /build, no account needed to try it.

Your name, a line saying what you do, and one number or email address. That’s enough for someone to save you and find you again.

If you only have five minutes, fill in those three and publish. A card that exists beats a perfect card that doesn’t, and you can add to it at the same address later without changing the QR code.

Yes. A face is how people remember who you were weeks later, and a digital card can carry it into their contacts, which paper can’t.

A photo is the field that separates a digital card from a paper one. Paper can print a picture, but nothing carries it into the other person’s phone. A digital card can hand it over inside the contact file, so your face appears when you call or message them. How that works, and why some cards lose it on the way, is in how to make a contact QR code that saves your photo. Choose a clear, recent head-and-shoulders shot; it will be cropped to a circle.

Include the mobile number you answer and the email you read, plus your website if you have one. Add a work address only if people actually visit you.

Every contact detail you add is one more thing that can go stale, and one more choice the other person has to make. One number and one email you actually use beat three of each. Here is what the Save button copies into their phone, and what stays behind on your card:

Two or three: the ones where your contacts actually find you, such as LinkedIn for most professionals and Instagram or Behance for visual work. Ravencard’s free plan includes 3.

Every link competes with the others. Ask where someone who has just met you would look next: LinkedIn for most professional roles, Instagram or Behance for visual work, YouTube or Vimeo for film. On Ravencard Pro, links are unlimited, but the advice doesn’t change.

Yes, and it’s the thing paper has no room for. On Ravencard, each project gets its own images, documents and a link you name yourself: one project with up to 3 images on the free plan, and up to 10 projects on Pro.

This is the section most checklists leave out, and the one that changes the conversation. “Structural engineer” is a job title. “The 68-metre footbridge over the Thames” is something to ask about. One well-chosen project, with a couple of images and a link, does more than a paragraph about your experience.

Leave off your home address, personal social accounts, fax numbers, old job titles, long biographies, and more than one call to action. If you wouldn’t say it in the first minute of meeting someone, leave it off.

The test is the first minute of meeting someone. You wouldn’t give a stranger your home address, your personal Instagram or your full career history in that minute, and a card is the same conversation in written form. Old titles and fax numbers are simply noise; more than one call to action (“book a call”, “see my portfolio”, “follow me”) means none of them gets done.

One line: role and company, or role and what you make. Save the story for your projects.

“Head of Product, Nimbus Health” reads in a second. “Product leader passionate about human-centred healthcare innovation” does not, and says less. Put the passion in the projects.

A good digital business card is recognisably one person: a clear photo, a one-line title, the two or three ways to reach them, and a few pieces of work, in a design that suits what they do.

The five cards below are the examples the whole site uses. The people are fictional, with generated portraits; the cards are real, drawn by the same code that serves every Ravencard, and you can open each one on the home page. For each, here is who it is for, what went on it, and why.

A studio lives or dies by its portfolio, so the portfolio comes first: an identity for a coffee roaster, a market’s wayfinding, a typeface. The two links are the ones clients check, Instagram and Behance. There is no LinkedIn and no long bio; the work does the introducing.

Engineering is a formal field, and the card behaves like it: a single LinkedIn link, an office address at city level because clients do visit, and projects that work as credentials. “Thames Footbridge” answers “what have you built?” before anyone asks.

Product work is hard to show in a picture, so Sofia’s projects are named after results: a triage flow used in hospitals, onboarding cut to four minutes. LinkedIn and X are there because that is where product people follow each other.

For a cinematographer the photograph and the design carry as much as the text: a dark, photographic layout that looks like his work. The links go straight to moving pictures, and each project has a link named for what it opens, such as “Watch the film”.

A small practice sells its buildings, so the card is mostly buildings, on a bold graphic design that says “architect” before the title does. Instagram is the one link, because that is where the work is posted.

All five are live. Open them on the home page and tap Save contact on your own phone to see what arrives.

Your name, what you study or the role you want, an email address, LinkedIn, and one project that proves it. A single strong project beats a list of courses.

A student card has one job: to make the next conversation easy. The role you want in the title line, the email you check, LinkedIn, and a project that shows you can do the work, such as a thesis, a hackathon build, or a portfolio piece.

Your work. Lead with the project most likely to start a conversation, then how to hire you.

Clients hire freelancers for what they have made, so the order on the card should follow the order of the decision: the work, then who you are, then how to reach you. One link called “Book a call” or “Hire me” is worth more than five social icons.

It should at least look deliberate: one colour, one typeface, a photo that fits. Ravencard has 29 designs; the free plan uses one (Ledger), and Pro unlocks every design plus custom colour, ground, pattern and typeface on three basics.

A design is not decoration; it is the first thing the other person reads. A photographic design suits a photographer, a strict grid suits an engineer. Whatever you pick, keep one colour and one typeface, and use a photo that sits comfortably in it. The pricing section shows exactly which designs and features each plan includes.

Update it whenever something changes. The card updates at the same address and the QR code stays the same. People who already saved you keep the old copy, so tell key contacts when something big changes.

Updating is the whole point of having the card at an address. Change jobs, change numbers, finish a project: edit the card and the same QR code shows the new version to anyone who opens it. The contacts people saved before the change are copies, and they include a link back to your card, so a quick message to the people who matter closes the gap.

Paper has room for a name, a title and two numbers. A digital card has room for your face and your work, but it still has to be read in a few seconds, so the same discipline applies.

The extra room is an opportunity, not a requirement. For the wider comparison (cost, the handover, what each kind does better), see digital vs paper business cards.