For entrepreneurs, productivity is key. Productivity and technology are synonymous nowadays. Whatever you do, I’m sure there are always more than 10 tabs open on your Chrome browser.
Today, I’ll give an overview of how technology in the form of chrome extensions can vastly improve an entrepreneur’s productivity, communication and collaboration and, in turn, improve his/her company’s overall efficiency and performance.
We have listed 10 such Chrome extensions that entrepreneurs claim they cannot do without.
The Best Chrome Extensions for Enterprises and Startup entrepreneurs in 2019
1. Todoist
Work can be overwhelming sometimes no matter how much we love it! There are days when you know that you have a million things to do but not quite the required zillion hours to do them. So, it’s easy to lose track of a few important things.
Todoist helps avoid just that! It is a chrome extension that lets you organize your to-do list and organize, plan, and collaborate on projects, big and small. It has been downloaded almost 18 million times and has a 4.5 rating on Chrome store.
Todoist helps you unclutter your mind and track every task on pen and paper. It has a simple UI/UX whereby any task can be captured with a simple “Quick Add” button. You can also add due dates and recurring due dates to your tasks and check them off as you go. It enables you to set your priority by highlighting what’s important by color-coding
them. You can also track your progress and stay on track with amazing visualizations.
2. Lastpass
Passwords are cumbersome and one of the toughest things to remember. And the no. of sites that we mandatory need to register on are infinite. Also, quite naturally, passwords are always at the risk of being hacked.
Then, how do we make life better with so many passwords? We use a password manager. Lastpass Chrome extension helps you set as well as remember passwords. With features like seamless background sync, offline access, and security, passwords can now be accessed anywhere, anytime and on any device you are logged in.
As soon as you register on a site, Last pass stores your password and autofill it, later on, to make the process of logging in easier and smoother. This works for all sorts of mobile apps and sites.
Last Pass has a 4.6 rating on Google store with a 9,077,387 user base. It also comes with password strength analyzer, auto-filling of forms and an uncompromising degree of security to keep all information private, secure, and hidden, even from themselves.
3. Calendly
You can run, you can hide but can’t escape business meetings. And meetings are good, only when you are prepared. Manually scheduling your meetings and remembering them by heart is not only inefficient but also time-consuming and often involves a huge email thread.
With this appointment and meeting scheduling Chrome Extension, Calendly, schedule your meetings without the back-and-forth emails. All you need to do is set your time and date preference and send out the link to your clients, investors, traders, etc and they can pick a time and the event is added to your calendar.
Calendly works with Google, Outlook, Office 365 or iCloud calendar so that double booking is never an issue. It also automates tasks with Salesforce, GoToMeeting, Zapier and more. It has 122,945 users and a 4.8 rating on Google App Store.
4. OneTab
Entrepreneurs are synonymous with multitasking. And multitasking on Google Chrome means endless tabs open in your browser. All these tabs result in slowing down your computer at times. What if I told you there is a better way?
One Tab converts all your tabs into a list, saving up to 95% memory and reducing tab clutter. With 1,830,272 users in its database and a 4.6 rating, One tab is one of the best tab compressor extensions in the market.
With this chrome extension, tabs in the list can be restored individually or all at once.
5. Hunter.io
Every company needs leads to expand their business. But, finding leads is time-consuming. You need to track your leads on a social media channel and then find their email ID by googling it. If you are lucky, you might end up with the email ID or at least an email pattern. But most times, you just end up wasting your time without any end results.
This changed with Hunter.io. Like Google, Hunter crawls the entire web and index almost all publicly available email addresses. Hunter has 348,632 users and a 4.7 rating on Chrome store.
You can easily search using the company domain name or if you are looking for a specific employee, you can also search by the first and last name of the employee. They also let you know whether an email ID is verified or not.
6. Awesome Screenshot
A picture is worth a thousand words – and this stands for business too. Anyone who has remotely worked with software design, development or documentation of any sort knows what a lifesaver these screenshots can be. Screenshots help in illustrating concepts which are otherwise hard to explain.
I think the best screen capture & image annotation tool at this point in the Chrome app store is Awesome Screenshot with over 2 million users. It comes with a variety of features like screencast, record screen as video, screen capture, blur sensitive info, add annotations, etc. It has a rating of 4.6 out of 5 on the Chrome store.
7. LinkedIn Sales navigator
Again, coming back to lead generation – LinkedIn has revolutionized the way connections are made with their own LinkedIn sales navigator chrome extension. It’s an incredibly valuable resource for B2B businesses.
With over 299,980 users and a 3.6 review, this extension is a convenient way to build better business connections and relationships by surfacing LinkedIn insights about your prospects without having to leave your inbox.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers loads of filters that enable companies to further narrow their search for ideal clients, recruiters, companies and greatly increase their chances of conversion. With the extension, one can see rich LinkedIn profile data for their contacts directly in their Gmail, including shared connections, experiences, and interests.
8. DocuSign
Electronic signatures are making life easier for managers and entrepreneurs across various industry verticals. Digital signatures are increasingly replacing the traditional method of signing and authenticating documents.
DocuSign enables small businesses and enterprises to electronically sign and collect signatures from others and manage all the documents from one place. DocuSign lets users quickly sign documents without leaving their Gmail. Once the signature is done, the documents are automatically attached to the original email and mailed back.
With 153,339 users and 4.4 reviews, DocuSign works with any device to help sign and send documents on the go. It also provides real-time status updates and reminders.
9. Evernote
I always say this – Note-taking is an underrated skill. You don’t have to run a business to know that. FYI – Richard Branson and Bill Gates are enthusiastic note-takers! Note-taking helps with understanding concepts at depth. It also aids your memory and helps you remember better.
But when you are an entrepreneur, you cannot open a notebook and start taking notes. Evernote helps in effortless and organized note-taking. You can take notes, share them and access them from every computer and phone you use. One can also use Evernote to collaborate with their team and manage their projects.
With 2,828,936 users and 4.4 ratings, Evernote integrates with just about everything. It also has a separate browser extension to save web pages in one click for future reference. Another awesome feature that Evernote came up with is automatic image processing whereby you can search for words inside photos.
10. Toggl
Time tracking is a concept that is familiar to everyone. Some are for it and some against. But when you are a business owner, knowing where your time goes is paramount. Time tracking also empowers people to improve how they work because they get an overall idea of how much time they are investing where and also how frequently they’re switching contexts etc.
With 236,667 users and a 4.5 rating out of 5, Toggl dominates the time tracking niche. It allows quick real-time productivity tracking and all the data gets stored on the Toggl account. It has over 100+ integrations, the most familiar ones being Trello, Asana, Todoist, Jira, etc.
Toggl also comes with other important features like Pomodoro timer, idle time detection, and tracking reminder.
Bonus: Markup Hero
Parting words
These are not even 0.1% of all the Chrome extensions that are there on the Chrome store. But these are the crème de la crème of chrome extensions that will help you stay focused, increase your productivity and help you create a better business.