What should the page behind your card show?
One obvious action, above everything else. The card buys you a few seconds of a stranger's attention, and a page offering six equally weighted choices spends all of them. Everything else on the page is secondary to the single thing you want them to do.
One action, decided in advance
Before designing anything, name the one thing you want a recipient to do. Save your contact, book a call, see your work, join a list.
That action goes at the top, as the largest and most obvious element. Everything else is subordinate to it.
A page with six links of equal weight has made no decision, so the visitor makes it instead, and most of them decide to leave.
Different cards can point at different pages if you genuinely have two audiences. That is cheaper than one page trying to serve both.
It has to be fast
The page opens on a phone, on a mobile connection, in a room where a conversation is happening. It has seconds.
Keep it light. A page that loads slowly after a tap is worse than a printed card, because it has raised an expectation and failed it.
Make it work without anything installed. Requiring an application is fatal, since nobody installs one to receive a business card.
And make sure it works on the phone rather than assuming a desktop layout will do. This is the only device it will ever be seen on.
Offer the contact file
The most useful thing a card page can do is let the recipient save you with one tap, by offering a contact file to download.
That delivers what a written contact record would have, without freezing your details onto a card you gave away.
Put it first if saving your details is the action you chose, and keep it visible even when it is not.
Include only fields that will stay true. Every field is one more thing to become wrong, and a contact saved with an old number is worse than none.
What to leave off
An animated introduction. It costs the seconds you were given.
A consent banner you do not need. A page that greets a new contact with a dialogue is a poor first impression, and whether you need one at all depends on what the page actually does.
A form asking for their details before giving yours. The card was your introduction, and asking first inverts it.
Long biography text. Someone who wants it will look for it, and someone who does not is being delayed on the way to the action you chose.
Frequently asked questions
Should the page hold my whole CV?
No. Choose one action, put it first, and let anyone who wants more find it below. Depth costs you the seconds the tap bought.
Can I use a third party card platform for the page?
You can, and the address then belongs to them. Using your own domain keeps the cards working if you ever change provider.
Should I offer a contact file to download?
It is usually the single most useful element, since it gives the recipient what a written contact record would without freezing your details.
Does the page need to work offline?
It cannot, since it is fetched over the network. Where handovers happen without coverage, contact details written to the card itself are the alternative.