Most Google review card design advice starts with the artwork. At a counter, the artwork is almost never what went wrong. Cards get ignored because they are too small to scan comfortably, because they say nothing about what tapping them does, or because they sit somewhere nobody looks.
That said, the design does have a job — it has to look like it belongs to your business rather than to a supplier. Here is what actually matters, in order.
The instruction line does most of the work
Four words beat a clever tagline. 'Tap to review us' or 'Scan to rate us' tells the customer what will happen before they commit, and people are far more willing to tap something when they know where it leads. On an NFC Google review card the tap and the scan do the same job, so one instruction line covers both. A card with a code and no instruction gets ignored, however good it looks.
Size and contrast
Print the QR at least 2 cm square with a clear blank margin on all four sides, dark on light. Low-contrast pastel codes and inverted light-on-dark ones scan unreliably in the dim indoor light of a real shop. The QR size guide covers the distance maths if your card sits further from the customer.
Design for where it will sit
A card lying flat next to a card machine is read from above at arm's length; a standee is read from the front at a metre. Those are different design problems. If your card keeps getting buried under receipts, the format is wrong rather than the design — a standee stays upright and visible where a flat card does not. The same rules carry over to a Google review standee design; only the viewing distance changes.
Can I get a template?
Not a downloadable one, and that is deliberate: a review card only works once its chip and QR are linked to your own Google review page, so a blank template would be a picture rather than a working card. What you do get is the design done for you — our team sets the card up with your business name, logo and branding before printing, and that comes with the card itself. Compare formats on the review card comparison, or see how the Google review QR code itself gets encoded before anything is printed.
