5 Web Tools to Streamline Your Business

by Kristal Reagan

As business owners we look often for tools that will help us streamline our business or tools that make daily tasks easier and faster so that we can get back to what we really need to be doing, growing our business.

To help streamline my business and daily activities and to keep me on task I use Google Chrome and Gmail along with some really great Chrome extensions. Just today I was asked these 2 questions:

Q.  Kristal, do you know a way I can easily make a snappy and branded email signature?

A.  Why yes, yes I do! It’s called Wisestamp.

Q.  Kristal, do you know of a tool where I can find out the color codes for the colors used in a color scheme online?

A.  Why yes, yes I do! I use the eyedropper extension for Chrome.

My next thought was that people need to know this! Especially if you are working with your own site updates, creating your newsletter layout, or creating a new header or other image using PicMonkey or Canva. But I couldn’t leave it at just 2 Chrome extensions to share so I picked my 5 favorites that I use ALL the time and would have a hard, even frustrating time, running my business without them.

1. For Productivity and to keep me on task I use Chrome App and Extension GQueues. This is great for keeping track of all my to-dos. It was developed with David Allen’s Getting Things Done in mind. Honestly, I prefer this over IQtell and Evernote. GQueues is a full-featured task manager for your Google Account and Google Apps account. The Extension is a super quick way to add new tasks to your list(s) and you can copy from the web. My favorite part is that I can set reminders in my Google Calendar and can even set it to send me a text message (which must be enabled in your G Calendar first).

2. To answer the first question above I love, love, love Wisestamp.com for a free signature service that is added directly to my Gmail account. When I first found Wisestamp I wasn’t even using Gmail as a way to connect to all my email accounts and send/receive. I was using Microsoft Outlook but I created an email signature with it anyway and was easily able to copy and paste it right into my Outlook signature which looked and worked great! Go check it out, it works with more than just Gmail plus you can copy and paste just like I did.

3. This is probably my #2 most used extension for Chrome and this is the answer to question #2. I like Eye Dropper to find the color codes, names, and numbers for colors used on the web. I use it frequently when updating my website and for building client sites and designing headers, logos, etc. This extension makes it super easy to grab any online color to replicate it in other programs. Plus if you are a developer and need to give your clients their color numbers it’s easy to grab those numbers and then save a screen capture to send to them. Saves you quite a few steps!

4. Speaking of screen capture, in the past, I have always used the snipping tool that comes standard with Windows operating system after XP I believe. But it seemed to take a little longer than I liked so now I use this nifty little extension called Awesome Screenshot: Capture and Annotate. This has been quite the time saver for me especially when creating screenshots of the WordPress dashboard for blog posts/training videos.

5. Who uses bitly.com to shorten URLs? ME! And the extension makes it so super easy. It couldn’t be easier, you simply click that little “B” icon and it automatically copies the shortened link to your clipboard. Find it here.

Those are my 5 most used Chrome apps and extensions that keep me on task, keep me branded, and save me time to help me keep my business moving forward.