Analytics for your digital card: what to measure and how to use it to get more contacts
Your digital card generates data every time someone views it: device, location, source, time spent, and what they click. What CardQR's Analytics panel actually measures, five patterns to read it, and how to set up a UTM scheme by channel.
Every time someone opens your digital card, CardQR records where they came from, what device they're using, how long they stay, and what they do inside it — not just that they viewed it. That difference is what separates "I got 40 views" from "I got 40 views, 70% from mobile, half came from the QR at Thursday's trade fair, they stayed an average of 40 seconds, and 12 people downloaded the contact." The Analytics panel is a Pro feature and lives in the Analytics section of your dashboard.
What gets recorded on each visit
- Device: type (mobile, tablet, desktop), brand, model, operating system, browser, and version.
- Location by IP: country, country code, region, city, timezone, and approximate coordinates.
- Source: the referrer URL and its domain separately, plus all five complete UTM parameters — source, medium, campaign, term, and content — if you add them to the URL you share.
- Engagement: how long the person stays (duration in seconds) and how far down they scroll through the card (scroll percentage, 0 to 100). This is what distinguishes "opened and closed" from "read all the way to the bottom" — and it doesn't show up in a normal view counter.
- Unique visit: each visit is marked as new or repeat, so you don't count the same person ten times if they come back to view your card again.
- Bots: automatic crawlers are flagged separately and don't skew your numbers. It's the difference between a view counter inflated by bots generating link previews and data you can actually use to make a decision.
Duration and scroll together give you insight that neither provides alone: someone who stays a short time but scrolls all the way to the bottom probably scanned quickly looking for something specific (phone number, website); someone who stays a long time without scrolling much might be re-reading the top section, or taking time to decide whether to click something. Neither of these things is bad by itself — the key is cross-referencing them with what action that visit actually results in.
In addition to the view itself, each specific action someone takes inside your card is recorded as its own event, with a timestamp:
| Action | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
view | Initial view of the card |
contact_click | Click on the contact data block |
phone_click | Click to call by phone |
email_click | Click to open a new email |
social_click | Click on a social media link |
website_click | Click to your website |
download_vcard | Download contact (vCard) to mobile contacts |
share | Use of the share card button |
map_click | Click on the location map |
calendar_book | Booking an appointment or call from the card |
whatsapp_click | Click to open WhatsApp |
copy_contact | Copy a contact detail, for example the phone number |
Each card also keeps two aggregate counters — total views and times shared — visible at a glance, and has its own analytics toggle: if for any reason you don't want to measure a specific card (a test one, for example), you can disable it without affecting the rest of your cards.
How to read it: five patterns and what to do with each
Many views, almost no actions
The problem isn't traffic, it's the card: there's no clear call to action or your contact details don't stand out enough. Check what widget or button you have as the main action, and whether it really looks good when opening the card on a mobile phone, not just on your desktop.
Many vCard downloads, few direct phone or email clicks
People are saving your contact for later, not contacting you in the moment. It's a signal of deferred interest, not disinterest — good reason for follow-up by email later, not necessarily urgent.
High duration but no actions
Someone stays inside your card for a while and still doesn't click anything. It usually means they're reading but can't figure out what to do next: check if your main action button is visible without having to scroll down to find it.
Low scroll
If your average scroll percentage is low, a large portion of your visitors never even see what you've put at the bottom of the card. It's the clearest signal that the order of your blocks is wrong: important stuff goes at the top, not at the bottom.
One UTM source that dominates the rest
If a specific channel appears disproportionately as the source of your visits, it's the clearest signal of where your card is actually working — and where it makes sense to invest in more QR codes, more NFC, or more distribution. It works the other way too: if a channel you invested in barely appears, that QR might be placed somewhere nobody looks.
A note on location: if you suddenly see a spike in visits from a country that doesn't fit your business, review it carefully before drawing conclusions — it could be real traffic (someone forwarded your card to a contact abroad) or just noise from bots and automatic scanners that didn't get filtered out completely.
How to set up a UTM scheme by channel
Add different UTM parameters to your card URL depending on where you share it, so the panel separates traffic by channel instead of mixing it all under "direct":
- Email signature:
?utm_source=email&utm_medium=signature&utm_campaign=firma-general - QR printed at a booth or trade fair:
?utm_source=qr&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=feria-madrid-2026 - LinkedIn post:
?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=lanzamiento-producto - Specific email campaign:
?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=octubre-2026
With that, every QR you print or every link you share is tagged by its actual source, and the UTM breakdown in the panel tells you exactly which channel brings real contacts and which one just brings views.
What to look at each week and what to look at each month
Week to week, what's useful is the operational side: whether a one-off event or campaign generated the expected traffic spike, and whether direct contact actions — call, email, WhatsApp — stay stable. Month to month it makes more sense to look at trends: whether the percentage of views that result in some action is going up or down over time, which UTM channel stays constant versus which ones were just a one-day spike, and whether your dominant country or device has changed — a signal that your card is reaching a different audience than before.
Export the data
The Pro plan includes export of this data, so you can take it to a spreadsheet or cross-reference it with other metrics outside of CardQR — useful if you're already keeping a monthly report elsewhere and want to add these numbers without copying them by hand panel by panel.
Frequently asked questions
Are bot visits counted?
They're detected and flagged separately, so they don't inflate your real view numbers or your device or country statistics.
Can I disable analytics for a specific card?
Yes. Each card has its own analytics toggle, independent of the rest of your cards — you can have analytics active on some and disabled on others without them affecting each other.
How accurate is IP-based location?
It's approximate, at the city level — not a postal address. It's useful for knowing what area your traffic is coming from overall, not for pinpointing a specific person.
Can I export the data?
Yes, analytics export is available on the Pro plan.