What to put on a business card

• Your name, as you want to be addressed.
• What you do, in a few words: a role, a trade, or a plain description.
• Who you work for, or your own business name, with the logo if there is one.
• One phone number, the one you will answer.
• One email address, the one you read.
• Your website, if you have one worth visiting.

That list has not changed in a hundred years, and a card that stops there is a good card. Everything below is about what to add, and in what order, when the card is a page rather than a rectangle of paper.

Anything you would not want a stranger to have, and anything you will not keep up to date. A home address rarely belongs on a card unless you work from home and see clients there. A fax number is a historical curiosity. A second and third phone number tell the person you do not know which one you answer. Social profiles you have not posted to in a year are better left off than left stale.

Leave off slogans unless they are short and true. And leave off a long list of services; the card's job is to make the person want to find out more, not to tell them everything now.

A photo, first. People remember faces far better than names, and a card that shows yours is the one they will find in their contacts a month later. Paper cards can carry a photo too, but rarely do, and never at a size that helps.

Then links that work. A printed web address has to be typed; a link on a digital card is pressed. That changes what is worth including: a portfolio, a booking page, a specific piece of work, a map pin for your shop. A digital card can also carry a save button that puts your details straight into the phone's contacts as a vCard, which paper cannot do at all, and a short form so the person can leave their own details in return.

Finally, a digital card carries the right version. Change your title and the card changes. That is not something to put on the card, but it changes how much you dare to put on it, because nothing is fixed.

Ask of each one: if the person pressed this, would it help them, and would it help me? A link to your website passes. A link to a LinkedIn profile you keep current passes. A link to a dormant account fails. A booking link passes for anyone who takes meetings, and often turns out to be the most pressed thing on the card. Three to five links is a comfortable range. Umbel's analytics show which links are pressed, and the pattern is nearly always the same: two or three get all the traffic, and the rest are furniture.

On a digital card, yes, in almost every case. Choose a recent one with your face clear, cropped close, with a plain background, and check it at the small size the card will show. The exceptions are roles where the business is the brand and the person is interchangeable, where a logo in the photo's place is the better choice. On paper the question is harder, and most people rightly skip it.

Top to bottom in the order someone meeting you would want them: who you are, what you do, how to save your details, then how to reach you, then where to find out more. The save button belongs high up, since saving the contact is the one action most people take. Links come last. Whatever your card service offers, choose one design and one typeface and resist the second colour; a card that is calm reads as confident.

If the card is for a team, the shared details belong on the template and the personal details belong to each person. In Umbel a template fixes the parts that are the same on every card and leaves the rest to the card's holder, so a sales team's cards match without anyone copying the office address twenty times.