Lemontaps: Fully Automated NFC Card Design, Live in One Week
- Live in 1 week
- Zero manual design work
Sales teams are moving from paper to digital, and the NFC business card has become the bridge between the two. Lemontaps, a German startup that builds digital business cards and lead capture tools for sales teams, lets its customers fully customize their NFC cards. As the business grew, designing every card by hand stopped making sense. They chose Zakeke to hand the design over to the customer, automate the whole flow on Shopify and keep the team focused on the product, without building a bigger design department.
Lemontaps is a German-based startup that provides digital business cards and lead capturing for sales teams. Alongside its software, Lemontaps sells NFC cards, including metal ones, that open the owner’s digital business card with a single tap. Every card can be fully customized by the customer, and Lemontaps has been using Zakeke to make that possible for around four years.
“I’m one of the co-founders of Lemontaps. We’re a German-based startup, and we provide a tool for digital business cards and for lead capturing for sales teams. And we implemented Zakeke around four years ago because we also offer NFC cards that our customers can fully customize.”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps
THE CHALLENGE
Before Zakeke, every custom NFC card went through the Lemontaps team. Customers received design guidelines and sent their design, then the design team had to place each design manually before the card could go into production. Every order meant back and forth with the customer until the result was right.
On top of that, many of Lemontaps’ customers are smaller companies without a design team. They simply didn’t know how to create a design that would fit the card, which slowed things down even further.
“We were doing everything manually. So we had design guidelines, and customers had to send us their design. […] They had to place the design and yeah, then produce the cards. But yeah, the disadvantage of this is obviously lots of manual work and also a lot of smaller companies, they don’t have a design team, so they don’t know how to create a design.”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps
As Lemontaps grew, the manual process could only scale by hiring more designers. That was not the direction the founders wanted. The goal was a fully automated flow, from the moment a customer starts designing to the moment the file reaches the printer.
“As I said we were, like, growing and then we didn’t want have a big design team. We wanted everything fully automized. And this is when we were looking for the solution.”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps
THE SOLUTION
Lemontaps started by searching for design tools for Shopify, the platform their store runs on. Zakeke stood out because it covered every requirement at once. As a German company selling internationally, Lemontaps needed a customizer available in both German and English, fully integrated with Shopify and with their order management system.
“Because we are, like German-based, we needed a solution that provided also translations, so Zakeke can offer us a German version and also an English version, and it’s really well implemented with Shopify together. So it also works with our order management system.”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps
Metal NFC cards need artwork in vector format. Zakeke generates production files in the format Lemontaps needs, including vector files, and can vectorize the customer’s artwork. The file that arrives with the order is ready to go straight to production.
“It also generates the files in a way that we need them to be generated. For example, we have metal NFC cards, and the design needs to be uploaded as vector files, and this is also possible. […] So everything we needed for the designs was possible with Zakeke, and then perfectly integrated with Shopify. So then we said, ‘Yes, let’s go for Zakeke.'”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps
Setup was quick and required no developers. Anna remembers setting Zakeke up herself, maybe with an intern, and Lemontaps was live with full automation in around one week.
“It was pretty easy. We didn’t need any IT team to set it up. I think back then I did it or maybe with an intern even. So I think in around a week we were live. So yeah, really straightforward.”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps
Today the whole experience happens on the Lemontaps website. The customer chooses the card material, the Zakeke designer opens, and they add their logo and name. The QR code that links to their digital business card is placed automatically. The customer checks out on Shopify, and Lemontaps receives the order with the design attached, ready to send to the printer.
“So right now we have like our website and there’s a section to order, like to choose the material and then yeah, the designer opens. […] They can like add their logo or their name and we automatically place a QR code inside to lead to the digital business cards. And then, yeah they purchase on Shopify on our website, and then we receive the order with the design, and then we send it to the printer.”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps
THE RESULTS
With Zakeke, the end customer creates the whole design. The Lemontaps team no longer chats with customers about artwork or places designs by hand. Nobody has to step in between the order and the printer, and the company can keep growing without adding designers.
“As I said, we don’t need to write with the customers anymore, so the end user can create the whole design, and we don’t need to do anything in this process, like in between.”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps
Lemontaps considered building its own design tool, then decided against it. Using Zakeke saved the opportunity cost of coding and maintaining a customizer in-house, so the development team could stay focused on what Lemontaps actually sells: digital business cards and lead capture for sales teams.
“I think definitely go for a tool like Zakeke because it doesn’t really make sense to code everything by yourself. That was also something we have thought about. But then I think it’s a lot of opportunity cost to code something whereas your development team can focus on your actual product. And yeah, also the costs are fair, so I think you should go for a tool like Zakeke and not code anything by yourself, and also not do everything manually. That also doesn’t make any sense.”
Anna · Co-founder at Lemontaps