Have you ever wondered about business cards in your pocket or those forgotten in a drawer? Every other day one can think of a different design, need to change the contents, not mentioning those physical business cards are nowadays, honestly, sort of deprecated practice when it comes to sharing contacts with your business peers. Professional connections sharing now happens online and business cards as we have known them for decades also changed their contents to comply with a modern world.
Although physical business cards still have some value, especially those creative ones which can be even helpful, now you can keep all your contacts in digital databases and have them by hand immediately.
We are proud to introduce you to Kopply, a digital replacement for the paper business card, which, on top of that, plants trees! We have interviewed the founder of Kopply, Björn Wagner.
Hi Björn, who are your users?Our users are all sorts of people who need to network effectively, from entrepreneurs and small businesses to salespeople. If you have ever been handed a business card or gave your own, Kopply will be a helpful app for you when you are launching a new business.
When you start a new business, you should always start with a question of why. What’s yours?The wastefulness of printed business cards is not just here in Germany (a country that loves unnecessary paperwork) but an enormous global problem. In fact, over 100 billion business cards are printed each year. That’s more than 6 Million trees each year, tons of CO2 emissions, chemicals and hundreds of litres of water wastage. It’s enough to make us cringe when realizing the low business value of these throw-away cards that weren’t even worth the effort to type and save a name and email address when you know you could google it later. These are big numbers, and they represent an impact more significant than just you and me. But like every environmental initiative, we as global citizens have to start somewhere. So we dogfooded Kopply to alleviate this issue and help to revert it by helping more individuals.
How Kopply makes my life easier?Saying “No” to printed cards — Why are digital business cards your better choice?
With your digital business card, you can offer a professional introduction right in the hands of your new clients. Gain an immediate engagement and wow factor — all while maintaining your sustainable business values.
Your digital business card is always at hand, ready to scan a QR code on your phone or insert as a link into any email or professional content. Your client loads your card immediately (most phones already have integrated QR scanners in the standard camera function) and is presented with your smiling face in their hands. Your contact information is ready to use immediately without typing and re-typing it from a printed card. In one click, they are on your website, or your social media page, sending you an immediate email or saving your contact details to follow up later.
How do you perceive the role of localization of Kopply in user adoption?It’s that easy. A wow-factor, immediate connection and professionally representing your business identity.
In the beginning, we thought it would be enough to offer the app in English, but we quickly realized that especially on the German market, people expect you to support German too. The same will most probably apply to other countries, such as your country, Czechia, where people are used to everything in their native language.
How is Localazy used in your product? Integrations used, new markets approached. Maybe you’d want to share your perspective on software localization?We use Localazy to translate our mobile and web application into other languages. Before we started using your service, this was a very time consuming and error-prone process. Now, we can even use our network to help us translate the app into many different languages.
Why did your team decide to use Localazy for app localization, and what alternatives did you consider?Honestly spoken, we were doing it by hand because we weren’t aware of such a service. We use Flutter and follow their standard best practice to integrate Kopply with Localazy. Translation of our products became a collaborative process, and even people with no technical knowledge could start helping us translate the product. We can ask friends to review the translations, and we can automate it.
What are your favourite Localazy features and why?Ease of use: You upload one file, and other files will be created with the same structure. We upload our files using GitHub Actions every time we push a changed language file into the repo.
Collaboration: It’s super fast and powerful to invite users to the product and let them help you with the translations.
Automatic translations: Even though we look over every translation, it’s already a good thing that your files will be translated by default, and you only have to re-align it a bit.
Pricing: Maybe not a classic “feature”, but I really enjoy the one-time payments.
Do you have any tips or advice you’d like to share with our readers?There are tons of things you can think of when you want to develop an app. I18n might not have the highest priority on your list, but if you spend a little time beginning with the implementation, you won’t have to replace all your text once you want to support more than one language.
Call to action for Localazy usersMy dream is to have one place where I can update my #contactinformation if something changes.#networking #contactmanagement pic.twitter.com/RwpCj9s0p8
— KopplyHQ (@KopplyHQ) January 19, 2021
Here at Localazy, we really value innovative ideas getting into the shape. For that reason, we have decided to support Kopply on their journey to produce less waste and more value for every person and the environment. Kopply is 100% bootstrapped, and they do deserve big support. Are you an early adopter? Get your fresh Kopply card today and use it on the go from your phone or in the comfort of your workplace using Kopply browser addon.
Follow Kopply on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kopplyhq
Download Kopply App: kopply.com
Björn Wagner, Founder
Björn loves to build and try new things out. He had studied business administration but found his real passion when he wrote his first lines of code.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://localazy.com/blog/case-study-kopply-business-card-plants-trees