BizzCards

Product Experience

Problem Space 

Problem Statement  

How might I create a digital contact information management system for professionals providing services and business owners, that minimizes the risk of contact information being discarded, incentivizes interacting with that information, and allows one action to share any or all contact information with clients and stakeholders?

Problem Background  

Physical business cards allow professionals providing services and business owners to share contact information, such as their name, number, email, website and socials with many stakeholders such as potential clients, potential business partners and even clients just served, so there's a chance of repeat business.

There are a few drawbacks of physical business cards. Firstly, they are a static piece of information, therefore none of the information on them can be interacted with, such as a simple click to dial the phone number or to visit the website listed on it. Secondly and most importantly. physical business cards can be misplaced or simply thrown away very easily. Once the business card is thrown away, a sales lead is essentially dead and the networking effect comes to a complete halt.

Research Insights

Using a survey, I validated a few obstacles we had hypothesized in regards to the act of exchanging contact information between two people. These obstacles were the following:

• 88% of surveyors reported using at least two separate methods to share/exchange different contact information, such as hopping between different social media platforms to provide usernames associated with that platform. This validated my hypothesis around the need for a single tool/method to share multiple pieces of contact information, all at once.
• Losing business cards before storing the information somewhere; According to an external source, 88% of business cards are thrown away within a week. 63% of people throw business cards away because they don’t think they need the service. This validated my hypothesis around the need for a digital business card to reduce these instances from occurring
• Running out of business cards to give out
• Storing names in a contacts app, which can’t be found later on due to the lack of details entered

I asked surveyors if they would have a business card for their service or business. 60% of surveyors said yes and 33% said maybe. I then asked surveyors if they would have either a website, social media account or both if they were to provide a service or own a business and 100% of surveyors said yes. I finally asked surveyors if they would use a digital method to share any/all contact information with another person with one single action and 76% said yes, 24% said maybe.

The survey responses and the external research was promising as it aligned quite well with the three goals I wanted users of BizzCards to achieve by using the product.

Solution Space

I want to create digital business cards for professionals providing a service and business owners. Digital business cards will allow recipients to save any/all contact information of their new connection right away in their device with one simple action. This will also ensure that this information isn’t easily discarded, unlike a physical business card. Once contact information is saved from a digital business card onto the recipient’s mobile device, recipients can then interact with the information within, such as visiting the business’s website or social accounts right away by simply accessing those links within the contact card that could be found in the standard contacts app on the mobile device.

Future Steps

If I were to proceed forward with turning this idea into a reality, I would conduct a little more research, specifically through my surveys to further validate the problem I proposed with a bigger sample size. The findings are consistent and the user base seems large enough, then I would proceed further with defying the properties of the MVP I want to build. 

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