The Online Business Card

I love the concept of digitizing business cards. These days anything that can be made on paper, whether its a check, a business card, or a grocery list, can be digitized. Instead of writing checks, we now use online banking. To make a grocery list, we use a word processor. Surely, business cards will follow suit.

An awesome example of this would be Thomas Marban's "hub page". It is extremely clean and profesional looking, yet with an artsy, elegant feel due to its great design and calming blue color scheme. As you first look at the page, the white rectangle with his picture and title immediately grabs your attention. This brings your attention right where it should, to the most important information on the page. Essentially, the whole rectangle (the white portion and the lighter color with all the contact information) is a business card embedded within the page. Most of all, I find it especially cool that you can download all of his contact information via the link to the right of his e-mail address (the miniature looking business card).


The next feature that gains your attention is the list of his websites along the right hand side of the page. Again, using the color white, he brings your attention to these links. He doesn't make these white links come off too strong, which keeps the focus on the "business card" portion to the left. Then, along with each link, he lists his involvement with the company/website.

Lastly, he puts links to all of his social media (web 2.0) profiles along the bottom, in a darker text. The social links are there, but in a humble way that doesn't draw your attention away from the "more important" information.

I think the online business card is a great concept. Initially, for me, four reasons stand out as to why an online business card is better than its paper counterpart:

1. Environment. Less paper consumption never hurt.
2. Findability. Your name will be one Google search away from anyone in the world.
3. Accessibility. No more digging through your pocket or briefcase to find your business cards. No more worrying about running out and having to get new ones printed. Ideally, your card will be available to the world 24/7, as long as you have good website hosting.
4. Convienence. All you have to do is tell somebody your domain name, which is especially easy to remember if it is yourname.com. If they don't think they'll remember, then you can simply e-mail them the link or they can search your name on Google.
   

Again, the link for the awesome example is: http://thomasmarban.com/