Kristen Doyle 0:00
Hey there. As online business owners, we are always looking for ways to save time and boost our productivity without having to work more hours. Today, I am sharing 21 Chrome extensions that can help streamline your business and save you work. And trust me, some of these are absolute game changers. You are using Chrome right? If you’re not, you should be. Whether you’re selling digital products, running courses, offering services, or some combination of all of them, these tools can help you work smarter, not harder.
Speaker 1 0:37
Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like teachers pay teachers, Etsy or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you’re in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I’m Kristen Doyle, and I’m here to give you no fluff, tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process. Things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automation, and so much more. Let’s get started y’all.
Kristen Doyle 1:16
I’ve organized these extensions into five main categories to make it super easy for you to find exactly what you need. We’ll start with the category that probably impacts us all the most, at least I know it does for me! Focus and productivity.
Kristen Doyle 1:32
First up. I know we all probably struggle with having too many tabs open in our browser, and the problem with that is that eventually it will start slowing down Chrome, if not your entire computer. Now, if it is an everyday occurrence for you that Chrome starts running really, really slowly, then you need WorkCona, I think, is how you pronounce it, Tab Suspender. This is a tool that will essentially just suspend your CPU usage, your computer’s processing usage, on tabs that you haven’t touched in a while, so that the tab can still stay open. You don’t have to lose the progress or the link that you have open, but it will keep from slowing your computer down too much, and it will keep from draining your battery if you’re not plugged in.
Kristen Doyle 2:30
The nice thing is those tabs are still there, so you don’t have to open websites, log back in any of those kinds of things. They’re still there and ready whenever you’re ready to come back to them. Now here’s a quick bonus tip that actually isn’t even a Chrome extension. I used to use a Chrome extension for this, but chrome now has built in tab groups.
Kristen Doyle 2:52
So if you have lots of tabs open and you want to save them, maybe to use tomorrow, you can right, click on any tab and click “Add tab to new group”. Or if you already have groups created, you can drag that tab into an existing tab group. And then there’s also the option to save that tab group so it doesn’t go away when you close your Chrome window. So you can pull up these groups of related tabs anytime you want to.
Kristen Doyle 3:23
I do this for things like all of the Logins I’m going to need for the pages I use on my CEO day when I start doing my accounting. So the login page for the bank accounts, the credit card the QuickBooks, all of the reporting for the different places where I sell products in my businesses. I keep all of those in one tab group called CEO day, and I can just quickly click on that, open up all of those pages, get logged in, and get right back to work on that once every month when that CEO day rolls around.
Kristen Doyle 3:55
All right. Extension number two, and if you have ever heard me talk about Chrome extensions. You’ve probably heard me share this one because it is so important for me, specifically for staying focused when I have to open social media while I’m working. This one is called News Feed Eradicator. I still love it. I still use it all the time. What this extension does is it will just remove the News Feed section from a ton of websites, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, all the things Twitter is called x. Now I can’t even keep up.
Kristen Doyle 4:34
It will remove the News Feed part so that you don’t get distracted by the news feed, that endless flow of more and more and more and more content, but you can still get to the things you need, like your business page, your Facebook groups, messages, things like that that you need to be able to access. It just keeps you from getting distracted. It hides the news feed and drops in a little motivational quote for you. Sometimes they are super inspiring. Sometimes they’re kind of funny, but it just drops in a little quote and hides that news feed so you don’t go down some rabbit trail that takes you off track in your work.
Kristen Doyle 5:11
All right. Next up is one called Inbox When Ready. This is kind of like News Feed Eradicator, but for your Gmail. So I know that sometimes I need to get into my email in order to find something. Maybe I need to, you know, find one of those six digit codes to log in somewhere, or I need a link to something I know someone has emailed me while I’m working, but I know what happens for me is I pop into my inbox and I see all these new messages from people, and I feel like I have to open them and read them and respond to them right now, and then that takes me off track and distracts me from the task I came to my inbox for in the first place.
Kristen Doyle 5:49
And maybe I forget about it. Maybe that authentication code expires because I took too long, or I just don’t get around to the task I wanted to do. So Inbox When Ready will hide your inbox so you can still log into your Gmail. You can send emails, you can search for things. You can go into your folders. You just don’t see the actual inbox. And you can determine on their settings, how long you want it hidden for, how often you want to be allowed to check before it hides. All of those kinds of things. There’s lots of settings that you can use for that.
Kristen Doyle 6:23
Number four is another extension that will block distractions for you. This one is called Time War, and it takes things a little bit further. This one actually just will not even let you in, for example, your Gmail or your Facebook or whatever. When you have that focus setting turned on. So if you need something a little more harsh than newsfeed Eradicator, then Time Warp might be a good solution for you.
Kristen Doyle 6:50
The next one is called Marinara. Yes, like the pasta sauce. This one is a Pomodoro style timer that sits right up in the Google Chrome extensions area of your browser window, if you’ve never done Pomodoro work sessions, essentially, you just work for 25 minutes of focused work, and then you take a five minute break, and then you come back and you work again, and you do three of these 25 minute blocks, and then you take a little bit longer break, maybe 15 minutes.
Kristen Doyle 7:20
I find for me, I am super productive when I know I have 25 minutes to get this task done and I’m going to put my head down and focus and ignore all the distractions so that I can get the work done before that timer goes off. The thing I like about this extension is, instead of having to have a separate window open in your web browser, which we’ve already talked about how we all have too many tabs open. This one runs right up there in the top of your browser, where the rest of your Chrome extensions are, so it’s a really easy way to glance up and see how much time you have left, but without distracting you or having to click over to a different tab.
Kristen Doyle 7:57
All right, now that we’ve got you focused and productive. Let’s talk about keeping your business secure and tracking some metrics and some of these important things that we need to be doing in our business.
Kristen Doyle 8:10
Number seven, let’s talk about password security. This is super important for everyone who uses the Internet, whether you use it personally or for business. We are in a day and age where you really should not know any of your passwords to anything. You should be using random, long passwords that aren’t easy to remember, and they’re different for every website.
Kristen Doyle 8:34
In order to do that, you need a password vault so that you can get logged in when you don’t remember your passwords. I recently made the switch from LastPass, which I know I have recommended in the past, to OnePassword, and I’m so glad that I did. It works very similarly. One Password secures all of your passwords. It also helps generate super strong passwords, those really random ones, for you, and you’re able to share passwords with anyone that you need to share them with.
Kristen Doyle 9:05
The thing I really love most about one password, aside from the fact that they are far more secure and haven’t had security breaches like LastPass did, is that you can create multiple vaults, so your passwords go into vaults. You can think of them like folders. I have several vaults for my businesses and one vault for my personal passwords. So the personal vault is for passwords only I need access to, and then I have multiple vaults for the business based on who needs access, because you can grant different people on your team access to different vaults.
Kristen Doyle 9:41
So I have certain vaults that only my Kristen Doyle web design team gets access to. I have other vaults that people who help me out with Chalk and Apples get access to. It’s a really easy way to separate things so that people don’t have more access than they need. It’s a great way to safely share your login credentials with a team or with a spouse or even your kids, because you can create vaults and share with anyone that you want to.
Kristen Doyle 10:08
Another thing I love about one password is it gives you a great place to share things like API keys that you might need for licenses for things that you use. It also will let you save other types of secure notes. So for example, I have in my one password My TSA Pre check number along with a note that tells me when it expires, because I know the only other place that lives is in some paper letter they mailed me and somewhere in my inbox. So I’ve got that note right in one password, it’s easy to pull up. I also have my passport number and when it’s expiring, all of those kinds of things that I tend to forget and have to go hunt for just live in my OnePassword now.
Kristen Doyle 10:49
All right, next up, Tag Hound is a little newer to my toolkit. I have recommended other Chrome extensions for this in the past that have been deprecated, so Tag Hound is what I use now and recommend to show you, if you’re tracking, pixels are actually working. So if you are running any kind of ads, you need to track conversions, you want to make sure the pixel or the Google Analytics that you’ve installed is actually working on your website. You can install Tag Hound. Go to your website and click on tag count, and it will show you immediately all the pixels and tracking codes that are running on your site right now.
Kristen Doyle 11:28
This lets you really quickly verify if you installed them the right way, you put them in the right place, and if they’re actually working. This has saved me so many times when I was trying to figure out why a client’s Google Analytics wasn’t showing any data or help them figure out why they didn’t see things in their Facebook ads that they thought they should based on their website. It really is helpful for just taking a quick peek at what is being tracked on your website and which specific pixels or tracking codes are attached to that site.
Kristen Doyle 12:02
All right. number nine, the Google Analytics UTM builder, is another new extension I’ve been using, and I absolutely love it. It is just a free tool that helps you to create and manage links with those UTM parameters. Those are those special tags that tell Google Analytics exactly where your traffic is coming from. If you are on a marketplace platform and you’ve created UTM links, there these Google Analytics UTM links work the same way, and I always intend to create them for things I’m sharing on my own website, but then I can’t remember the website that does it, or just going to another site seems like too much work.
Kristen Doyle 12:46
So instead of having to open up a new website or try to remember how to do it correctly with the right format yourself, this extension creates them for you in just a couple clicks. So it’s really easy to go to the page you want, click on the extension, add in the parameters you want, and then copy the already formatted link so that you can track which of your social media posts or your email campaigns are driving the most traffic to your site or anywhere else you need to see where people are coming from.
Kristen Doyle 13:15
All right, let’s move to some design and visual tools that help your business look polished and professional. Okay, so the first one, and I adore this one, if you just love fonts, and you see font you like, and you want to know what they’re called,What Font is a simple little extension that will identify the fonts that are being used on any website. It also will tell you the font size and the font weight, which is really important, especially on your own website if you’re trying to make things consistent.
Kristen Doyle 13:37
On a related note, Number 11 is called Color Zilla. This one will find the hex code. That’s just the computer code that you need for any color that is on a website. You can pull those colors from an image or logo or a background or wherever it is on any website. It’s a really great way to make sure you’re keeping things cohesive and tied into your branding, because you can pick and choose those colors out of your logo to make sure you’re always using the exact same color.
Kristen Doyle 14:18
Number 12 is called View Image Info, and this one will tell you what size any image is on any website. Now, I doubt you need to go looking at other people’s website images to see what size they are, but the reason I think this one is so great is because this will help you know what size your images actually need to be on your own website based on the size that they are displaying.
Kristen Doyle 14:43
See most of the time, what I find is that bloggers create images 234, times as big as they actually need to be on their website, and that can contribute to some performance issues on your site. So if you know exactly what size the images need to be, then you can create them as small as possible for your blog posts, your product listings, whatever pages you are creating on your website.
Kristen Doyle 15:08
Next up is one called Go Full Page. And this one lets you take full page screenshots of any website, and you can save it as either an image or a PDF. This is super helpful for when you need to save an old version of something, maybe you think you might need some words from an old sales page down the road, or you just want to save an entire blog post or something like that.
Kristen Doyle 15:37
Along those lines, let’s move into some chrome extensions that can help you create documentation and other types of content that you might need.
Kristen Doyle 15:47
The first one is called loom. If you have not heard of Loom, I don’t know where you’ve been the last few years. Loom is a screen recording tool, and I use it constantly. Now, I will give you a little caveat. I actually don’t use the Chrome extension for loom. They have a desktop app, and that’s what I use, because the desktop app essentially puts the same thing as the Chrome extension right at the top of my computer desktop, and that means I can use it to record my Chrome windows, or any other Windows I have open on my computer.
Kristen Doyle 16:29
But they do have a Chrome extension that will let you record things specifically in Chrome, so I would recommend having one of the two of those. What I really love about Loom is that it makes it really easy to share your videos, because you get a link that is immediately shareable with anyone. In fact, when you hit stop on the video, it automatically opens up the video and copies that link right to your clipboard. You don’t even have to highlight it and copy it yourself. So you can paste that link in and share it with anyone. And it makes it really easy to embed those videos on any website anywhere.
Kristen Doyle 16:54
Next up is one called Awesome Screen Recorder. And I know I just shared about loom, which is for screen recording. This is kind of an alternative to loom in some ways. I don’t use it as often because I like the way that loom does their sharing, and I have a whole library of content in Loom at this point. But this one is really handy when you need to create some sort of quick tutorial or something, and you need to be able to annotate while you’re recording.
Kristen Doyle 17:23
So you can add arrows, you can add text, you can highlight certain areas while you’re recording. And that can be super helpful depending on what kind of content you’re creating. So if you ever need to annotate your screen recordings, Awesome Screen Recorder is what you want for that.
Kristen Doyle 17:38
Number 17 is Tango. Tango is amazing for creating these Step by Step Tutorials or SOPs for your team. If you have one, while you’re working through a process, you hit record before you start and Tango automatically captures screenshots and creates numbered steps with instructions that are very specific. It will say, click here, type this, click that, choose this from the drop down. It is way faster than taking manual screenshots and writing out all the steps yourself. And I use it all the time for documenting procedures, whether it’s things I need to share with my team or for clients and customers.
Kristen Doyle 18:17
Quick note about all of these, I like Loom the best anytime there are variables in the process that I might need to explain verbally, because Tango doesn’t create videos, it’s just text. But I do like Tango for more straightforward processes. And added bonus, if you’re thinking about creating tutorials that you’re going to share with other people, doing it in Tango means you can come in and edit individual steps to make changes down the road if you need to, rather than having to re record an entire video.
Kristen Doyle 18:46
Alright number 18, if you are using Notion in your business, and if you’re not really, should think about it, because I adore notion, then you want to get the Notion Web Clipper extension. This lets you save any web page, article, Podcast, episode, whatever it is, any web page, directly to your notion workspace in just a click or two, I use it to collect inspiration for things, to save resources for later, for compiling research for something new I’m creating. And you can choose exactly where in notion you want to save the content, and it keeps all the formatting from the original for you.
Kristen Doyle 19:24
It’s really nice for those things that you keep going back to over time that you would be devastated if someone deleted their blog post or something like that. It’s a great way to save some of those resources you’ve gotten from someone else’s website that are such an important part of your business now that you really need to make sure you continue to have access to those.
Kristen Doyle 19:48
All right, let’s talk about creating content and making sure your writing is as good as it can be. Now, I have always used Grammarly, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, but. Their ads for their upgraded plans have gotten super intrusive recently, and I started looking for an alternative because I felt like it was just always getting in my way.
Kristen Doyle 20:10
So what I’ve landed on is an extension called Language Tool, and it works very similarly to Grammarly by checking your writing on pretty much any website anywhere. It does support a lot more languages than Grammarly does, and you can customize the rules that it follows as well to match your writing style, which is really nice. There are a lot of things that Grammarly was constantly correcting for me that I didn’t want it to because that’s just not my writing style.
Kristen Doyle 20:37
They were trying to make it lots more formal. And so I do like on Language Tool, how I can kind of tweak the rules a little bit. I’m just using the free version. Yes, there are upgrade options, but they are not annoying or in my face at all.
Kristen Doyle 20:50
All right. Next up, Quill Bot is another really cool writing tool. It’s great, especially when I’m stuck staring at a blank page or I need to kind of rework some content. It is primarily to help you paraphrase text and then rewrite content in different tones or styles. This can be super helpful when you are writing product descriptions and social media posts and emails and you essentially want to keep saying the same thing just in different ways. It’s great for helping you to repurpose content on different platforms that make sure everything sounds fresh but also still sounds natural.
Kristen Doyle 21:23
All right. Group number five, let’s talk about some operations things for your business.
Kristen Doyle 21:31
Number 19, let’s talk about saving you some money on your business expenses. The Honey extension, if you’ve never heard of it, it can save you money on anything you’re buying, whether it’s for business or your personal shopping. If you’re buying software, office supplies or tools for your business, honey automatically finds and applies the best discount codes, so that you don’t have to worry about it or hunt for coupon codes.
Kristen Doyle 21:56
What I really like about it is that it keeps track of price history too, so you can see if something regularly goes on sale before you make a big purchase, maybe you want to wait a few days.
Kristen Doyle 22:05
Number 20 is Toggle. This one is used for time tracking. So if you need to track your own time on something that you’re working on, maybe you’re doing a little bit of a time audit of how you’re spending your time, or if you’re working for someone as a VA and you need to track your time that way, you can use toggle right in your Chrome browser to do that. Now, personally, my team uses our client management system Moxie for all of our time tracking now, but before we had that system, or if you just need a standalone time tracker, this is the one that I used to use.
Kristen Doyle 22:39
And number 21, last, but definitely not least, is To doist for Chrome. This extension makes it super easy to turn anything you see online into a task or a reminder. So if you are browsing and you see an interesting article that you want to read later, or you know you need to follow up on an email, just a couple of clicks, and this is immediately in your to doist to-do list with a link back to the original content.
Kristen Doyle 23:08
It’s really perfect for people like me who come across things throughout the day that we need to remember to come back to later. Personally, again, I use my client management platform, Moxie, for most of my business to do list tasks. But what I really like to do ist for is when I run across an article or a podcast episode I’m listening to and I think, ooh, I should really do that thing that they’re talking about.
Kristen Doyle 23:31
I can add that task into doist with my notes about what was on my mind, what I want to do with this information. I can add that right in To doist, and then come back to it later on, when I have time. It’s really good for keeping me from going totally off track on some shiny object I just heard on a podcast when I had other important things I needed to do that day.
Kristen Doyle 23:55
All right, let’s make this super actionable. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to pick one extension from each category that addresses some pain point you actually have install it today and start using it. Use that one consistently for a week or two or three before you add another one.
Kristen Doyle 24:14
The key is not to overwhelm yourself by installing 21 extensions all at one time. You probably don’t need all of these anyway, so just start small and add new ones as you need them. If you have a favorite Chrome extension that I didn’t mention, I would love to hear about it. Send me a DM on Instagram @kristendoyle.co and let me know what extensions are working best for you.
Kristen Doyle 24:37
And hey, if you found this helpful and learned about some new extensions you didn’t know were out there, share it with another online business owner who could use these tools in their business too. I’ll talk to you next week!
