Google review cards, done by the rules

Why asking in person beats asking by email

Almost every business that wants more Google reviews tries the same two things first: putting a link in an email footer, and asking staff to remember to mention it. Both fail for the same reason. The email arrives hours after the visit, when the feeling has gone and the customer is doing something else; and staff on a busy shift do not remember, because remembering is the hardest thing to ask of anybody who is already working flat out.

A physical object solves both. It is present at the moment the customer is pleased, which is the only moment a review gets written honestly and quickly, and it does not rely on anybody remembering a script — it is simply there. The entire product is that substitution: an object in the right place instead of a reminder at the wrong time.

What it is not is a way of getting reviews you have not earned. Nothing here makes a bad job read well. It removes the friction between a good job and somebody saying so, and that is all it does.

Card, counter stand or sign: which review touchpoint fits

The chip and the code are identical in all of them. What changes is whether a person has to hand it over, and that is genuinely the whole decision.

• Cards work where a person closes the interaction — a tradesperson at the door, a stylist turning the chair round, a driver handing over a delivery. Somebody puts it in a hand at the right second.
• Counter stands work where nobody is free to hand anything over. On a café counter during a service the stand asks on its own while a customer waits, which is the one thing a card in a drawer cannot do.
• Boards and signs are for places people walk past rather than stop at — a reception wall, a yard entrance, a show stand. They collect less per person and reach far more of them.

You can design any of them yourself in the Design Studio and see the finished thing at its real size before anything is printed. Most businesses end up with two shapes rather than one: the stand that asks continuously, and a few cards for the occasions somebody is actually handed something.

What makes a good NFC review card

Five things separate a review card that keeps working from one that quietly stops. They are worth asking of anybody who sells you one, including us.

• It can be pointed somewhere else later. If the review link is written into the chip or the QR, a new listing or a renamed business means reprinting.
• It carries a printed QR as well as the chip, so a customer whose phone has no NFC, or has it switched off, still gets there.
• It counts taps and scans, so you can tell a card that works from one in a drawer. What the counts show.
• It sends everybody to the same page. A card that asks how it went first and only sends the happy ones to Google is review-gating.
• It is not a subscription. Paying every month to ask your own customers a question is a strange deal.

Ours does all five. A card with the link written onto its chip cannot do the first, which is fine until the day the link changes.

Google review cards for small businesses in the UK

They suit any business where a customer is pleased in person: a café counter, a salon chair, a tradesperson finishing a job, a pub at the end of the night, a garage handing back the keys. What to say, and when, differs between those, so each has its own page: cafés, trades, salons and barbers, pubs and garages.

More than one location, or more than one person

This is the question we are asked most and it is the one the cheap cards handle worst. If you run several sites, or several people who each deserve their own credit, you do not want one shared link and no idea where anything came from.

Every card and every stand carries its own code and is counted on its own. So a chain with eleven branches can see that three of them are producing reviews and eight are not, which is a management fact rather than a marketing one. A salon with five chairs can see which stylists are asking. A franchise can point each site at its own Google listing while keeping them all under one account, or point them all at a single listing if that is how the business is set up.

Because the destination sits with us rather than on the chip, none of that is fixed at the moment of printing. Open a twelfth branch, close one, rename the business, or move a listing, and you change where the codes point from your dashboard. How several people sit under one account.

What it costs, and how you get one

Review cards and stands are quoted rather than bought off the shelf, because they ship already pointed at the right Google listing and we would rather set that up than hand you a blank one. Tell us the business and how many you need and we will come back with a price and a proof of the artwork before anything goes on press. One quote can cover the whole job: review cards to hand over and a counter stand beside the till, both pointed at the same review page.

There is no subscription on any of it. The dashboard, the per-card counting and the ability to repoint a code later are included, because a review card you cannot measure and cannot redirect is just a printed link. If you also want cards that hand over a person's own contact details rather than a review link, those are our ordinary NFC business cards and they have a published price.