What an NFC totem is
It is an object in solid wood, made by hand like the Wood·Touch business card, with the same NFC chip hidden inside. It sits on a counter, mounts on a wall or stands as a column, and works the same way: a phone comes close, the chip answers, a page opens.
The difference from the card is not technical — it is about use. The card travels with a person. The totem stays in a place, and it is that place that speaks to whoever walks past, even when nobody is behind the desk.
No power, no battery, no cables
It is the first question we get, and the answer changes where you can put it. The totem needs no power supply: the chip is energised by the phone's magnetic field in the instant of reading, and between taps it is inert. There is no socket to find, no cable to hide, nothing to recharge at closing time.
It means it moves when you need it to, it goes on a cabinet with no socket nearby, and it does not stop working during a power cut — which is exactly what a wall-mounted tablet does.
What it can show
From the dashboard you switch on the blocks you need: a digital menu for a restaurant, a form to leave a name and email with the privacy consent collected on the page itself, the link to the Google listing for reviews, social profiles, the WhatsApp number, a PDF (price list, service card, floor plan) or an AI assistant that answers visitors' questions.
You change it whenever you like without touching the physical object, and you decide the order of the blocks: what sits at the top is what gets tapped most.
Visitors who do not speak the local language
At a hotel reception, in a medical practice in a tourist area or at an international event, a share of visitors do not read the local language. The page notices by itself: it detects the phone's language and presents itself in one of ten languages — Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Croatian and Slovenian — with a selector at the top to change it. The laminated sign in three languages on the wall does a worse job and costs more every time something changes.
Who actually needs one
At the reception of a professional practice, where it replaces the paper form for leaving a contact. In a hotel or B&B, for check-in and privacy consent. In a medical practice, for the history form or informed consent. In a gym or beauty salon, for the client record. In a restaurant, instead of the laminated menu that gets dirty and is never updated — and there the comparison with the QR code on the table deserves its own piece. In a showroom or a shop, where a customer can save the business's details themselves without waiting for someone to be free.
The common thread: a moment where there is a fixed physical object, and nobody who can stand there explaining everything out loud every time.
The counter is metal, and it answers anyway
Receptions almost always have a top with a metal frame underneath, and that is the situation where an unshielded NFC tag simply does not answer. The totem's chip is shielded against interference: it works even resting on metal. It is a detail nobody advertises and that you discover on the first try.
The three versions
Counter — €89, 20 × 30 × 15 cm: made for receptions and tills, it sits next to the register without stealing space.
Wall — €59, 20 × 15 × 15 cm: for anyone with no surface to spare, at the entrance or beside the door.
Column — €129, 20 × 100 × 15 cm: visible from a distance, useful in an entrance or at a trade fair.
All three in solid wood, made by hand, with the same chip inside and the same dashboard to configure them. The standard wood is spruce; others on request. The site also carries an augmented reality model: from your phone you place the virtual totem on your own counter to see whether the dimensions work, before ordering.
What you see once it is in place
Every visit leaves a row: day and time, phone language, device type, how long they stayed on the page, which blocks they touched. The dashboard charts them, and the hourly distribution is the part that surprises most: it tells you when people actually look, which is almost never the hour you assumed.