ICANetwork Introduces The "Smart" Business Card

The "Smart" Business Card is showing up in more and more cell phones as more companies harness the power of the QR Code, a specialty of the ICANetwork. End Quote

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Houston, TX (1888PressRelease) August 08, 2013 - The popularity of the "Smart" Business Card, also known as a Virtual Business Card, is on the rise. The ICANetwork, in an effort to educate business owners on the many benefits of using QR Codes, is offering free virtual business cards along with details about their many business applications from a marketing standpoint.

The standard printed business card, whose use became widespread in the 1890's by business owners and product creators to convey their contact information and company name and most recently, their web address, still have their place, but have lost much of their original effectiveness as a marketing tool.

The "Smart" Business Card offers a different avenue for sharing information with customers. Rather than information being printed on a card that once given is often put into a wallet or pocket, perhaps never to be viewed again except to ponder over and/or dispose of, the virtual business card deposits the information directly into the contact list of the "smart" phone of the recipient.

So how does this virtual business card information wind up in the contact list of someone's smartphone? Through the use of a bit of technology with ever increasing popularity called a QR Code. QR stands for "Quick Response." Smartphone owners simply scan a QR code, press "enter," and they are immediately taken to the website, the app, the online information the QR code links to.

There are several kinds of Smart Business Cards that you can design by creating a unique QR code, such as an URL QR Code, a Virtual Business Card, and a Phone QR Code.

The URL QR Code is the most common QR code usage. This is used to simply launch a smartphone's web browser and take the user to a specific webpage, and can be used to provide product information, launch a company's main website from a sign in a storefront window, provide a coupon on a point of purchase display, or in a print ad for more information. One will most likely find this kind scattered throughout a favorite magazine.

The Virtual Business Card QR Code loads all of card owner's contact information into a user's smartphone when they scan the code. The code will launch the user's address book and the card owner's information will be "populated" and ready to save, and can include a phone number, email address, url, physical address, etc. The Virtual Business Card/QR Code can also be shared right from the card owner's smartphone with other smartphone users, as well as via a QR code printed directly on the physical business cards so all the contact needs to do is scan the QR code and save the information to their phone.

When scanned, the Phone QR Code will automatically launch a smartphone's "Phone" feature and pre-load the phone number so that all the user needs to do is tap "Call" on their phone to immediately dial that number.

Although having a "Smart" Business Card may seem like a pretty smart tool to add to a marketing arsenal, the obvious drawback that springs to mind is not everyone has a smartphone. Here are some statistics to help put this in perspective: according to a recent post at Go-Gulf.com, as of Jan. 2012, "80% of the world's population has a mobile phone. More than 1.08 billion of these are smartphones, out of which, 91.4 million are from the United States." And the ICANetwork reports: "It is estimated that by the end of just this year, 2013 - and we are almost at this figure already - more than 50% of all internet traffic will originate from a smart mobile device."

Considering these statistics, and the steady increase in smartphone users, and adding to that the fact that a smartphone user can download a QR Code Scanner at no cost from various sources, although keeping printed business cards may be a wise choice, adding a QR Code containing the same information to that card may be at least as wise.

For more information on Smart Business Cards, QR Codes and their uses, and how one can get their own Virtual Business Card at no cost, visit http://BethMelloFreeQRCodes.com, or scan the QR Code image on this press release.

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