How to Track Digital Business Card Views, and What They Can't Tell You

AtlasLinq counts four things about your card: how often you share it, how often its web page is opened, how often someone presses Save Contact on that page, and which of your links get tapped. It does not tell you who opened it, and no honest digital business card can. The only way to know who someone is, is for them to tell you.

The more useful thing to understand is what the numbers leave out, because the biggest gap is not a privacy rule. It is that your most successful shares are often the ones that never show up as a view at all.

Where to see your numbers

In the app, Insights shows your total shares, your views this month, which sharing method you use most and a seven-day chart, and it breaks the numbers down per card if you have more than one. On Enterprise, the dashboard's Analytics adds the same picture across the whole team, along with which links on your cards get tapped.

What counts as a view

A view is someone opening your card's web page: from a link you sent, from an iPhone receiving an NFC tap, or from a QR code you set to open the link. The same visitor opening it several times in an hour counts once, so a recipient who reloads the page while deciding whether to save you does not inflate the figure.

The views you will never see

Most in-person shares do not open a web page at all, and that is by design. Your QR code carries your contact details inside it by default, so a scan saves you straight into the other person's phone. A tap to an Android phone does the same, and so do AirDrop and Quick Share. In each case your details arrive with no browser involved, often with no signal, and nothing reaches a server that could count it.

So read the numbers as two halves. Shares are counted on your phone, every time. Views and saves are only counted on the paths that open your card's page. A week with plenty of shares and few views at a trade show usually means the contacts went straight into phones, which is the best outcome there is, not a sign that nobody looked.

Saves and link taps

A save is someone pressing Save Contact on your card's web page, counted at most once a day per visitor. Views tell you a page was opened. Saves tell you it earned a place in someone's phone, which is the number closer to what you actually want. Many views and few saves usually means the top of your card is not answering the question people opened it with, and what to put on a digital business card is the fix for that.

Link taps show which of the links on your card get used. A link nobody taps in a month is taking space from one that might, and a booking or payment link that does get tapped is the strongest signal you have that the card is doing work rather than sitting in a contact list.

Why it cannot show you who looked

Counting an opened page is one thing. Identifying the person who opened it would mean tracking them across the web, and they never agreed to that. AtlasLinq counts and does not identify, and any card that claims to name its viewers without their consent deserves a question about how.

The way to know who someone is, is to ask, and the form on your card does exactly that. A visitor can leave their name and details, and you get a lead with a record of where it came from. Capturing and exporting leads covers how that works and what each plan lets you read.

Three numbers worth checking each month

• Your top sharing method, per card. If one card is mostly scanned and another mostly tapped, you are using them in different situations. That is fine, as long as each card's top lines suit where it gets used.
• Saves against views. Not the totals, the ratio. It moves when you change what the card leads with.
• The links nobody taps. Remove one a month and watch whether the others gain.

For a team, the same three questions across everyone are where asking your data questions starts to pay off.