Google Review Card Placement Guide

Why placement dominates the conversion math

Operators usually think of a review card programme as a design decision, then a print decision, then a rollout decision. In practice, placement does most of the conversion lifting (often 3–5× the effect of swapping card material or copy) and the sequence of work should be placement first, design and copy second, substrate third, because the downstream decisions are much cheaper to get right once the placement is locked.

• A customer gives a review when three things line up: they are satisfied (the service just ended well), they have a free hand (not holding a bag, phone, child or drink), and they are paused for a moment without pressure (no queue behind them, no rushing out the door). Placement is the only lever that controls all three at once, and the three conditions rarely hold for more than 8-15 seconds in a typical transaction.
• A premium card in a bad moment (the tabletop at a packed brunch service where the guest is already signalling for the bill) converts worse than a plain sticker in a good moment (the hotel checkout while waiting for the card machine to spit out the receipt). The card material and copy become meaningful only once the moment is correct; before that, they are decoration on a failing system.
• Placement failures look like product failures. Operators blame the card format when the real problem is that the prompt sits three steps away from the customer's natural pause. The card is on the wrong counter, the stand faces the wrong direction, or the sticker is below the customer's eye line. The card then gets redesigned twice before anyone notices the placement is wrong.
• Conversion variance across placements inside a single location is often larger than the variance across locations. A restaurant that runs the exact same card at the host stand, the tabletop, the bar and the pickup counter will see 4-8× variance across those four placements, because each one offers a different combination of satisfaction, free hand and unpressured pause. Measuring per-placement conversion is how the programme learns.
• Placement is also the hardest thing to change after rollout. Once cards are printed and stands are built, moving the prompt to a different counter requires new artwork, new stands, new staff training and new measurement baselines. The pilot is the only cheap place to test placements; the rollout is where placement becomes permanent.

The five high-value placement moments

Across hospitality, retail and service businesses, five placement moments drive the majority of review-card conversions. Knowing which one fits the business is the first decision, and most venues have exactly one dominant moment plus one or two supporting moments. Not five equal candidates.

• Checkout counter / front desk: the handoff moment. Card is best introduced verbally by the cashier or front-desk clerk when the transaction has just settled. 'we'd love a quick Google review if that was a good visit'. Handed over as a physical card, not pointed at from a stand. This moment converts highest (10-15%) in retail, healthcare, salons, and hotels, because the customer is already giving the counter their full attention and the ask feels like part of service closure.
• Tabletop prompt: the seated moment. Card or stand lives on the table. Works in coffee shops, casual restaurants, waiting rooms, and lobby seating areas where the guest is seated for more than three minutes. Weaker in fine dining where the tabletop is already curated with menus, flowers and cutlery and an additional object reads as clutter. In casual dining, the table tent converts 3-6%; in fine dining, the card belongs at the bill presentation instead.
• Pickup counter / to-go window: the short-dwell moment. Customer is waiting briefly (15-60 seconds) for an order to be bagged or called. A small stand or sticker at eye level is more effective than a card they have to take, because taking a card costs a free hand during a moment when the customer expects to be handed their order. Wall-mounted prompts at 120-140 cm eye height convert best.
• In-room surface: the private moment. Hotel desk, spa treatment room, fitting room, dental exam room (after service). Works when the customer has time and privacy; fails when the room has no clear call to action or the surface is cluttered with competing hotel-brand collateral. Hotel in-room desks with a dedicated NFC stand convert 4-7% of scans; pure in-room brochures (with a review URL buried inside) convert near zero.
• Bag-drop or delivery insert: the post-purchase moment. Card rides home with the order. Effective for e-commerce, direct-to-consumer retail and third-party delivery; requires a separate design because the moment is not live. The customer is unpacking alone at home and the card has to earn the action without any verbal cue. QR-first design works better here than NFC-first, because the customer's phone is often sitting down next to them rather than in their pocket.
• Waiting-line queue prompt (sixth, supplementary): the pre-service moment. A queue-management stand carrying a review prompt as customers wait in line. Lower conversion (1-3%) because the service has not been earned yet, but useful in high-volume venues where the post-service pause is too short. Customers who decide to review later sometimes use the queue moment to note down the business name or scan for later.

Matching format to moment

Each placement moment suits a specific card or prompt format. Mismatching format to moment is the single most common source of underperformance in review-card programmes. A venue gets excited about premium metal cards and deploys them at a pickup counter where customers never actually receive them, or a venue runs a table tent at a fine-dining moment where the tent looks out of place on white linen.

• Handoff moment → physical NFC card, handed over by staff. Substrate and finish matter because the customer holds the card for 5–10 seconds and their tactile impression anchors the brand feel. Premium PVC, wood veneer or metal are all valid; the choice matches the venue tier rather than being a blanket choice. A luxury hotel's metal card and a mid-scale diner's soft-touch PVC both work in their respective contexts.
• Seated moment → NFC stand or printed table tent. The prompt stays put; durability is more important than premium feel because the piece will be handled by hundreds of customers a month and hit with drinks, sauces and cleaning cloth. Acrylic stand with an NFC insert is the workhorse here. Laser-cut, weighted base, wipeable, lasts 12-18 months with minor refresh.
• Short-dwell moment → NFC sticker or small wall-mounted prompt at eye level. Sticker on the counter edge or a 10×10 cm framed card above the pickup window. The format has to be glanceable in under 3 seconds because the customer's attention is on the order handoff; anything that requires them to pick something up loses the moment.
• Private moment → NFC insert in in-room collateral, or a dedicated stand on the desk. Hotel in-room desk pads with an embedded NFC chip are effective because the guest encounters them while writing postcards, checking their phone, or settling in; the prompt lives in the ambient environment rather than demanding attention. Spa treatment rooms benefit from a small card on the dressing bench, where the guest encounters it after the service completes.
• Post-purchase moment → printed card insert in the order. QR-first design, because the customer is no longer with a device obviously in hand. Their phone might be charging across the room when they open the box. NFC as secondary. Include a reason to engage now: a personalised note referencing the specific purchase, a thank-you from the team, or a photograph of the team that personalises the brand.
• Queue moment (supplementary) → floor sign or stanchion-mounted prompt at eye height. Customers in a queue have their phones out and attention available; a well-placed QR-first prompt during the wait can capture reviews that would otherwise be lost. Lower priority than the five main moments, but worth adding as a second-phase placement.
• Staff-delivered moments are about the card's hold-in-hand feel; fixed-surface moments are about legibility and durability at a glance. The two format categories require different design treatments, and a card optimised for hand-delivery often does not read well on a counter, and vice versa. Plan format per placement, not a single universal card.

Surface and environment constraints

Placements fail when they ignore the physical reality of the surface. A great moment on a bad surface still underperforms, and the physics of the failure (NFC detuning, QR glare, ink degradation) is usually invisible to the operator until conversion data comes in low and everyone wonders why.

• Metal counters detune NFC antennas. If the card or stand sits on steel or aluminium (common in QSR, coffee shops, high-volume retail, and pharmacy counters), a standard NFC antenna drops 30-60% of its read reliability. Use on-metal NFC labels (antenna tuned for metal substrate) or raise the card off the metal with a 3-5 mm non-metallic spacer. Alternatively, move the card to a non-metal adjacent surface or deploy an NFC stand with a plastic base.
• Glass tables reflect and scatter light, reducing QR scan reliability. Matte QR codes on reverse-contrast backgrounds outperform gloss on these surfaces, and the card should sit at a slight angle (on a stand) rather than flat. Clear glass also shows the back of the card through the surface; a white card back reads fine but a patterned brand back can create visual noise that distracts from the front.
• Outdoor patios add UV exposure, rain risk, and temperature swings. Specify UV-resistant inks and waterproof substrates (outdoor-grade PVC, powder-coated metal, marine-grade laminate); replacement cadence will still be 2–3× indoor. Expect colour fade at 6 months in direct sun, laminate delamination at 9-12 months. Budget the refresh into the programme plan rather than letting outdoor placements quietly degrade.
• High-touch surfaces accumulate grease and sanitiser. Expect cards in these placements (bar tops, diner counters, hospital reception desks, fitness-club check-ins) to need replacement every 60–90 days; budget accordingly. Anti-microbial laminates extend this by 30-50% and are worth the small premium in healthcare and fitness contexts where guest hygiene perception matters.
• Sight-line obstacles matter more than operators realise. A card on the counter hidden behind a card reader, tip jar, menu stand or a row of coffee grinders is effectively invisible, even if it is physically present. Do a sight-line audit from a 170 cm customer height at the typical customer position. Anything the customer would have to crane to see is in the wrong place.
• Noise and lighting matter too. A placement under a bright overhead spotlight creates QR glare; a placement in a dim corner fails to catch the customer's peripheral attention. Warm-light venues (3000K) need higher-contrast cards than bright-light venues (4000K+). Test the placement under the venue's actual lighting, not the design-studio fluorescents.
• Competing visual noise: nearby signage, promotions, loyalty posters, digital menu boards and seasonal decor all compete for attention with the review prompt. A placement in a visually clean zone converts better than a placement in a busy zone, even if the busy zone has higher foot traffic.

Staff proximity and prompt integration

Placement has to align with whether staff will actively prompt or the card must work without prompting. These are different design problems, and the worst outcomes come from designing for one mode and operating in the other. A staff-prompted placement with no staff to prompt, or a self-serve placement that staff treat as 'someone should tell customers about the card' and then never do.

• Staff-prompted placements rely on a verbal cue during the handoff. The card is then handed over or pointed to. Conversion is high (5–15% of customers) when the prompt is sustained, and the prompt itself is what the staff-prompt-playbook addresses. The placement decision is about where the handoff happens physically (at the register, at the table, at the door) and placing the card within the staff's reach is part of the design.
• Self-serve placements rely entirely on the card's design to carry the ask. Conversion is lower (1–3%) but scales without training and works in unstaffed moments (drive-through windows, unattended pickup lockers, automated checkouts, in-room surfaces). The card's copy has to work harder because no human voice is providing the ask; every word of the call-to-action earns its place.
• Mixed placements combine both. A fixed stand at the counter plus an occasional staff prompt when staff have time. Conversion lands in the middle (2–6%) but is more resilient to staff churn and high-pressure service windows. The mixed model is the safest choice for mid-scale operators who cannot guarantee staff prompt discipline but also do not want to give up the conversion upside entirely.
• Match staff reality: if the team is understaffed, on a fast shift rotation, or has high turnover, design for self-serve from the start. Staff-prompted placements that cannot be sustained underperform fixed-surface cards, because the prompt is absent but customers still see the card with no verbal context and treat it as a failed ad.
• Managerial oversight: a staff-prompted placement needs a weekly check that the prompt is still happening, enforced through a shift-start huddle, a manager spot-check, or a mystery-shop audit. Without that check, the prompt decays within four to six weeks and the placement reverts to a self-serve format at self-serve conversion rates. Without the copy being optimised for self-serve.
• Peak-shift reality: the prompt is first to drop during peak service. Design a fallback for peak periods ('on Saturday lunch, we switch to a point-at-the-stand prompt instead of a hand-delivered card') rather than pretending the hand-delivered motion will survive a 400-cover lunch service. Staff will appreciate the realism.
• Cross-shift consistency: day-shift and night-shift staff often have different relationships with the programme. The placement and prompt have to work for both, and the training rhythm has to include both shifts equally. A night-shift-only team that is never in the Monday morning huddle is a common blind spot.

Pilot design: one or two locations, not all of them

A good pilot answers a conversion question. A bad pilot rolls cards out to every counter and hopes for signal. The discipline is to narrow the test, measure rigorously, and decide on a specific rollout scope rather than declaring victory based on a vague sense that 'things are working'.

• Pick two contrasting placements. One high-confidence (the moment staff already uses for upsell or for the loyalty signup) plus one hypothesis (a new moment the team wants to test). Not five: the more placements in the pilot, the less attribution is possible, and the harder it is to learn what actually worked. Two is the minimum for contrast and the maximum for clean attribution in a single-location pilot.
• Set a conversion target before the pilot starts. 'At least 10 new Google reviews per 1,000 transactions over four weeks' is a decision rule; 'see if it works' is not, and the latter framing leads to motivated-reasoning interpretation of the data at week four. Write the target down in an email or shared document before cards are printed; that document becomes the decision authority at the pilot review.
• Instrument the URL. Unique URL tags per placement (?src=counter, ?src=tabletop) so review source can be attributed through the redirect logs. Otherwise the pilot produces a review total and no information about which placement worked, and the rollout decision is made with less data than the pilot could have given.
• Run for four weeks minimum. Weekly variance (weather, staff shifts, holiday weekends, local events, social-media mentions) creates noise that disappears only with a few weeks of data. Shorter pilots reward whichever placement happened to get a good week, and the team then scales that placement into a format that underperforms in steady state.
• Decision meeting: at week four, decide which placement earns the scale order. Do not roll out both by default; one winning placement compounds faster than two mediocre ones because the team's attention, training and refresh effort concentrate on the winner. Two-placement rollouts often dilute both into under-performance.
• Losing placement: retire it or iterate once. Repeated failures at the same placement signal that the moment is wrong, not the card, and no amount of artwork or copy iteration recovers a bad moment. Accept the learning and move on; the pilot saved the operator the cost of scaling a losing placement across every location.
• Pilot memo: the programme owner writes a 2-page memo covering the conversion numbers per placement, the staff feedback, the customer reaction, the URL attribution breakdown, and the scale/iterate/stop decision with rationale. The memo becomes the evidence in the franchisee conversation, the training asset for the rollout, and the audit trail when the programme is reviewed a year later.
• Adjacent learning: the pilot often reveals adjacent issues (artwork too small, counter layout hides the card, staff uncomfortable with a specific phrase) that matter for the rollout. Capture these even if they were not the pilot's primary question, because the rollout will inherit them.

Vertical-specific placement case studies — cafés, dental, hotel, fitness, retail, automotive, healthcare

Abstract placement rules only get an operator 60% of the way to a working deployment. The last 40% comes from seeing how the rules apply in the specific physics and flow of each vertical. The patterns below summarise what has worked across operator deployments in eleven common verticals, with the specific surface, format, conversion benchmark and common failure mode for each.

• Independent café (single location, 200-500 transactions/day): winning placement is a small acrylic stand on the counter next to the till, 15 cm tall, facing the customer at a slight angle. Conversion: 4-7% of transactions. Common failure: placing the stand on the barista-side of the counter (invisible to customers), or placing it at 10 cm height where it hides under receipts and tip-jar chaos.
• Coffee franchise (Starbucks-style, 1000+ transactions/day): winning placement is an NFC sticker on the pickup counter (where customers wait 30-60 seconds for their drink name to be called) plus a small table-tent in the seating area. Conversion: 2-4% of transactions because of peak-window compression. Common failure: placing the pickup sticker below eye level or behind the drip tray, where customers never see it in the hand-off moment.
• Dental practice: winning placement is a desk card at the reception checkout, handed over with the next-appointment reminder and the receipt. Conversion: 5-10% of checkouts. Common failure: placing the card in the waiting-room magazine rack (patients never look at it while anxious), or on the clinical operatory counter (clinical compliance issues with visual clutter in the treatment space).
• Hotel (full-service, 150+ room nights): winning placement is a folio insert handed at checkout by front desk, paired with a post-stay email 24-48 hours later. Conversion: 4-8% of checkouts for reception delivery; 10-15% for concierge delivery to the high-engagement segment. Common failure: placing cards on in-room desks (guests pack them with stationery and never scan) or on elevator walls (environmental noise, low conversion).
• Fitness club (gym, 24/7 access model): winning placement is a turnstile sticker at the check-in scanner for self-serve plus a PT-specific handheld card for milestone moments. Conversion: 2-4% for sticker, 15-25% for PT-milestone. Common failure: placing cards at the reception desk where staff cannot deliver them during peak windows (6-8am, 5-8pm) and members walk past without seeing them.
• Salon/spa: winning placement is a mirror-station card handed by the stylist at the reveal moment plus a reception handoff at checkout. Conversion: 10-20% for stylist reveal, 5-8% for reception. Common failure: retail-shelf placement where clients are focused on product selection and ignore the review prompt.
• Auto dealership (service drive): winning placement is a card at the advisor's handoff desk, handed with the keys at service pickup. Conversion: 4-7% of ROs. Common failure: placing cards in the waiting lounge (customers are absorbed in coffee/WiFi/phone), or at the cashier counter if there is a separate cashier (too transactional, no relationship anchor).
• Pharmacy and drugstore: winning placement is a small counter card at the pharmacist consultation window plus a pickup-counter card for prescription collection. Conversion: 2-4% of transactions. Common failure: placing the card at the front checkout (pharmacy customers distinguish the pharmacy service from the front-of-store retail and review the pharmacy experience specifically).
• Urgent care / walk-in clinic: winning placement is a desk card at the patient-checkout station, handed with the discharge paperwork. Conversion: 6-10% of visits because the visit is emotionally significant and the patient is relieved to be leaving healthy. Common failure: placing the card in the exam room (patient is focused on clinical interaction, not reviewing).
• Retail boutique (clothing, accessories, home goods): winning placement is a card tucked into the purchase bag at the register, paired with a verbal prompt from the associate. Conversion: 3-6% of transactions. Common failure: placing cards in the fitting-room mirror frame (cheapens the fitting-room experience and reads as tacky signage).
• Outdoor / event venue (festival, pop-up, farmer's market): winning placement is a weatherproof laminated card at the payment station or a sticker on the vendor's trailer window. Conversion: 1-3% of transactions because the context is transient and customers are not dwelling. Use this placement as a volume play, not a quality play.

Physics of NFC placement — antenna tuning, read range and surface effects

Most NFC failures in real placements are not about the chip quality or the card substrate. They are about the interaction between the antenna and the physical surface the card sits on or near. Understanding the physics matters because it prevents the wrong placement diagnosis ('the card is broken, let's reorder') when the real issue is a steel counter, an anti-theft RFID tag nearby, or a stack of keycards directly under the review card.

• NFC operates at 13.56 MHz via magnetic-field coupling between the phone's reader coil and the card's antenna loop. The read range depends on antenna size, chip power requirements, and the electromagnetic environment. Standard card-format antennas (typically 38 × 22 mm loop in a CR80 card) achieve 2-4 cm read range with a typical smartphone. Not 10 cm as often assumed.
• Metal-surface detuning: when an NFC antenna sits directly on steel, aluminium or copper, the metal induces an eddy current that dissipates the antenna's resonant energy. This detunes the antenna from 13.56 MHz, typically to 16-18 MHz, where the phone cannot couple efficiently. Read reliability drops 30-60% with as little as 1mm separation; placement directly on steel countertops fails hardest.
• Ferrite-sheet mitigation: a 0.1-0.5 mm ferrite sheet laminated between the antenna and the metal surface absorbs the eddy current before it detunes the antenna. 'On-metal' NFC labels (common vendors: Xerafy, Omni-ID, Avery Dennison SmartFace OnMetal) incorporate ferrite in the label stack. These labels cost 2-4× a standard NFC label but are essential for steel-counter, stainless-appliance and industrial-equipment placements.
• Non-metal spacer alternative: if ferrite is not practical, a 3-5 mm non-metallic spacer (acrylic, wood, plastic) raises the antenna off the metal surface enough to restore most of the read reliability. A small 3-mm acrylic base under an NFC card is cheaper than an on-metal label and works for card-placement applications where the card sits on a metal counter rather than being adhered to a metal surface.
• Chip selection affects read range: NXP NTAG 215 (504 bytes) and NTAG 216 (888 bytes) are the mainstream NFC card chips, with read ranges of 2-4 cm on standard card-format antennas. NTAG 424 DNA (416 bytes) adds cryptographic authentication and dynamic URL rotation for anti-counterfeit use cases but costs 2-3× NTAG 215. STMicroelectronics ST25TA series and EM Microelectronic em|echo (EM4423) are roughly comparable Type 4 / Type 5 NFC tag chips at similar price points. (Note: Infineon SLE66CLX is a high-end secure-element chip family running Java Card OS with AES/RSA/ECC crypto engines — it's NOT a functional equivalent of NTAG 215, despite being NFC-capable. SLE66 belongs to the payment-card / eID secure-element tier, three orders of magnitude more capable and more expensive than NTAG 21x.) For basic review-card applications, NTAG 215 is the default and covers 95% of use cases.
• Anti-theft RFID interference: retail anti-theft systems (Checkpoint EAS, Sensormatic, Nedap) operate at 8.2 MHz (acoustomagnetic) or 13.56 MHz (RF). The 13.56 MHz anti-theft systems can interfere with NFC reads inside a 1-metre radius of an anti-theft pedestal. Placements near the store entrance or at the exit checkout counter suffer silent read failures that disappear when the card is moved to a placement 2+ metres from the anti-theft pedestal.
• Stacking effects: NFC cards stacked on top of each other couple their antennas and detune the stack. A phone tapping the top card in a stack of three tries to read all three simultaneously and usually fails to read any. Staff reaching into a card rack may try to tap the card while it is still in the stack; the tap fails silently and staff conclude the card is broken. Single-card handoff (staff removes the card from the stack before presenting it) or single-card display (a stand that holds one card visible, with the stack hidden behind) avoids the issue.
• QR-code placement physics: QR codes require at least 4 mm of quiet-zone padding around the code, 2 cm minimum physical size for reliable scanning at 40 cm distance, and at least 40% contrast between code modules and background. Gloss lamination creates glare at a specific angle of incidence (typically 15-30 degrees off normal to the light source) that can make a QR code unreadable at that exact moment. Matte or soft-touch lamination eliminates this glare.
• Phone-specific NFC behaviour: iPhones read NFC through the top 2 cm of the device (above the camera notch area). Android devices vary: Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy read through the centre-top of the device, OnePlus and some budget Android phones read through the centre. This means customers holding their phone 'flat against' the card may miss the antenna reading zone by 2-3 cm. Icons that show the phone top-edge tapping the card (not the phone-flat-on-card position) reduce mis-tap failures.
• Troubleshooting sequence: when a placement starts under-performing, verify in this order. (1) is the card/sticker still physically present? (2) is the placement surface metal? (3) is there an anti-theft pedestal within 2 metres? (4) is the card in a stack or hidden behind other signage? (5) tap test from a known-working phone at the placement. Most diagnosed 'card failures' turn out to be one of the first four, not a chip defect.

Format-vs-moment matrix — quick reference for the placement decision

The matrix below summarises the format-to-moment recommendation across the placements operators most often consider. Use it as a starting point in the placement workshop, then validate with a two-week test in the actual venue. Conversion ranges reflect typical operator-deployment data; the variance inside each range is wider than the variance across rows.

Pre-launch placement checklist — 10 items to verify before the cards arrive

The checklist below prevents the most common placement failures, all of which are invisible on a planning slide and obvious only after the cards are on the counters. Run through it in the venue, with the team that will operate the placement, two weeks before the cards arrive. Each missed item costs the programme a percentage point or two of conversion that compounds across every customer moment.

• Sight-line audit completed from the customer's actual standing or seated position (170 cm height for standing, 100 cm for seated). The card or stand is visible in the customer's natural eye path without head-turning.
• Surface check for NFC interference: confirmed whether the placement surface is metal (steel counter, aluminium reception desk, stainless prep table). If yes, on-metal NFC label specified or 3-5 mm non-metallic spacer planned.
• Anti-theft pedestal proximity check: confirmed there is no Checkpoint, Sensormatic or Nedap RFID anti-theft system within 2 metres of the planned NFC placement. If there is, the placement is moved or QR-first design substituted.
• Lighting test under venue's actual conditions: warm white (3000K), cool white (4000K) and any spotlight or window glare angle. QR code scans reliably from a current iPhone and current Android at 40 cm distance under each lighting condition.
• Staff-prompt rehearsal completed: the manager and two front-line team members have rehearsed the handoff motion and verbal script three times each. Awkwardness is surfaced in rehearsal, not on the live floor.
• Per-placement URL tagging configured (?src=counter, ?src=tabletop, ?src=pickup) in the redirect so the post-pilot review identifies which placement actually drove conversion.
• Stand or card holder physically secured: weighted base on tabletop stands so they survive a brushed shoulder or a knocked drink, mounted hardware specified for wall placements, double-sided 3M VHB tape for sticker placements.
• Refresh stock plan in writing: who reorders, when (monthly, quarterly, per-event), through which channel (central HQ, local print, vendor portal). The refresh discipline lives in the operating calendar, not in someone's email memory.
• Measurement baseline captured: the location's current Google review velocity (reviews per month, average rating, review-text length distribution) recorded for the 4 weeks before launch. Without the baseline, the post-launch lift cannot be defended.
• Pilot exit criteria written before the cards arrive: 'at least X reviews per 1,000 transactions over 4 weeks' or 'review velocity lifts to at least 2× baseline'. Writing the criteria before the data arrives prevents motivated-reasoning at the pilot review.

Common placement mistakes — six failure patterns that cost real review volume

The placement failures below are the ones that surface across operator pilots, regardless of vertical or brand tier. Each one is invisible until the conversion data comes in low and someone wonders why; the diagnostic checklist usually reveals one or two from this list as the root cause.

• Card placed where staff prefers it, not where customers naturally pause: the cashier puts the stand near the till because it is convenient to reach, but customers actually pause 30 cm to the side waiting for the receipt to print. The 30 cm of displacement costs 40-60% of the conversion. Fix: watch ten real customer interactions and place the card where the actual pause happens.
• Stand sitting on a metal counter without on-metal mitigation: NFC fails 30-60% of taps, customers give up, the team blames the chip and reorders cards. Fix: ferrite-laminated on-metal label or 3-5 mm acrylic spacer; the cost is small, the conversion recovery is significant.
• Tabletop card competing with menu, condiments, candle and tip jar: customers register the table as 'visually busy' and skip the review prompt entirely. Fix: minimal stand on a clean surface, or move the prompt to bill-presentation moment instead of standing tabletop placement.
• In-room hotel placement as primary channel: guests pack the card with the stationery and never engage. In-room is the weakest hotel placement; checkout-handoff is 5-8x stronger. Fix: move the primary ask to checkout, retain in-room only as supplementary luxury turndown touchpoint.
• Five placements launched simultaneously without per-source URL tagging: post-launch the team knows reviews increased but cannot tell which placement drove the lift. Optimisation becomes guesswork. Fix: ?src= tagging from day one, two-placement pilot before scaling, attribution discipline before scale.
• Worn cards left in place beyond their refresh cadence: a scuffed, faded card converts 30-50% worse than a fresh one because it signals operator neglect. Fix: scheduled quarterly replacement with a calendar reminder, not 'we'll replace them when we notice'.

Scaling and refresh rhythm after the pilot

A single location rollout is a sprint. A multi-location or multi-format rollout is a rhythm. Setting the refresh cadence up-front prevents decay, because the reality of programme operations is that without a scheduled rhythm, refresh only happens when someone notices the cards have fallen apart. Which is usually 2-3 months after they actually needed replacement.

• Month 1: winning placement scales. Supplementary formats (stickers at pickup, inserts in bags, queue-line prompts) launch only after the main placement is proven and the team is comfortable with the core programme. Launching everything simultaneously dilutes attention and makes attribution impossible when results come in mixed.
• Month 3: first refresh. Replace cards that have visible wear (scuffs, laminate peeling, fading colour); review conversion per location and flag laggards for coaching. The three-month refresh is also a good checkpoint for collecting staff feedback on the programme. What has worked, what has drifted, what needs adjusting.
• Month 6: seasonality review. Some placements (patio, seasonal storefronts, pool decks, outdoor markets) need rotated cards for winter or summer; adjust artwork and placement accordingly. Seasonal venues (beach resorts, ski lodges, Christmas markets) may need entire placement strategy shifts between seasons, and this is the moment to plan them.
• Month 12: format review. Consider retiring placements that are not converting at 1%+ and reallocating to better-performing moments. Keep a record of what was tried and why it did not work, so future programme owners do not repeat failed experiments. A retired placement is not a defeat; it is a deliberate portfolio decision.
• Measurement cadence: review conversion every 30 days. Per-location performance drives the coaching list (which locations need intervention this month); aggregate performance drives the programme decisions (artwork refresh, format changes, rollout expansion). Daily monitoring is overkill; quarterly is too slow.
• Decay signals: conversion halves from the baseline, cards look scuffed at arm's length, the stand falls over and stays fallen, staff stops prompting, or a new manager takes over and asks 'what's this card about?'. Any of these is a refresh trigger, not a crisis. Act on the signal in the same week it appears and the programme stays healthy.
• Replenishment discipline: quarterly replenishment orders shipped centrally beat ad-hoc local reprints on every axis. Cost per unit, artwork consistency, delivery reliability. Build replenishment into the operating calendar rather than letting each location re-order when they notice they are running low.
• Programme retirement: eventually some placements or some locations will retire the programme for good reasons (closure, concept change, programme re-architecture). Plan retirement the same way you planned launch. Graceful redirect transitions, retired-location fallback pages, and a documented handover of any URL or admin ownership.

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