5 Google Chrome Extensions you need for your Online Business
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Whether you're an online business owner or not, I strongly believe that you should be using Google Chrome as your main web browser when working on your computer. The main reasons that I think Google Chrome is the best web browser are its simplicity, speed, and security. The simple and clean design keeps the user from being distracted. The speed of the browser is much better than any of its competitors in my experience. As far as security goes, if I have to put my faith in a company to secure my information online, I think Google is the best bet.
I use Google Chrome every day in my business as well as the G Suite. I find it to be the best for organizing my emails and storing all my design files.
Another one of the reasons I'm a fan of Google Chrome is the add-ons and extensions you can get for the browser. Today I'm going to share 5 extensions that I used almost daily in my business. If you're not already familiar with me and my work I'm a Squarespace website designer and branding expert. The Extensions I will be highlighting are directly related to that kind of work; however, I'm sure you'll find them helpful not matter what kind of online business you have.
1) Full page screen capture
Have you seen any of the blog posts that I've written about my favourite websites designed in Squarespace? If you have, you'll remember the screenshots that are of the websites that I've included in the post. If you haven't I've included an example here.
Like this website? View it in my portfolio here.
Read about the 10 best Author & Podcast Squarespace inspiration websites
Read about the 10 best health & wellness Squarespace inspiration websites
Back in the day before I had Full Page Screen Capture in order to make a long screenshot of a website like this I would have to screenshot each section of the website and stitch the images together in photoshop. That's fine if you only have to do one or two web pages, but if you're doing a bunch of them, it really takes up a lot of time.
It is the simplest way to take a full-page screenshot of your current browser window. Click on the extension icon (or press Alt+Shift+P), watch the extension capture each part of the page, and be transported to a new tab of your screenshot where you can download it as an image or PDF or even just drag it to your desktop. It's that simple, and I think that's why it might be my favourite Chrome Extension.
This extension is offered by gofullpage.com and at the writing of this article has over 3.8 million users with a 5-star rating with over 38,500 reviews.
I'm not the only one who loves it:
Keri H Says:
"Absolutely LOVE this extension! Perfect, clean, WHOLE page shot every time - no limitations to the length of the page. I save a ton of time and I use it for all of my web research. So much easier to just look back at the image, rather than trying to copy and paste or write it down myself. One button click, and it's done!"
Robert C says:
"This extension is amazing. I have never encountered a website it didn't capture perfectly, regardless of sticky headers and iframes and anything like that. It's perfect for capturing bugs in web development or showing off designs!"
Sevil R says:
"I use this extension all the time. It's become part of my day and I'm always amazed when I see others take screenshot the old-school way! Scroll, grab, scroll grab. What a waste of energy when you can instead use Full Page Screen Capture."
Anyways, I think you get my point. It's a great tool, and it saves a ton of time! The only issue I've ever run into with when using its is sometimes websites that have parallax website banners appear to glitch in the screen capture. Sometimes they work fine, but even if I have to fix one or two sections of the screengrab, it's nothing compared to all of the time I save.
Download Full Page Screen Capture
2) ColorZilla
When working as a web designer or graphic designer, sometimes you have to get creative to get the exact colour matches for a design you're working on. Sometimes the client doesn't know the colour of something, or you need to pull a colour from an online resource. In the past, I would have to take a screenshot and then take that screenshot into Photoshop and use the colour selector in Photoshop to find out the hex colour from an image. Now one of my favourite tools in the ColorZilla extension is the "Pick Color from page" feature. Not only does it tell you what the colour is but if you click on the colour, it saves it and copies the hex colour number so that you can paste it into a field wherever you are working. I find this to be extremely helpful when working in photoshop or Squarespace to bring in a specific colour quickly. The tool also saves a history of colours you have picked so you can go back to them when you need.
Here is a list of the main features from this plugin:
✓ Eyedropper - get the colour of any pixel on the page
✓ Advanced Colour Picker (similar to Photoshop's)
✓ Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator
✓ Webpage Color Analyzer - get a colour palette for any site
✓ Palette Viewer with 7 pre-installed palettes
✓ Colour History of recently picked colours
✓ Displays element information like tag name, class, id, size etc.
✓ Auto copy picked colours to clipboard
✓ Keyboard shortcuts
✓ Get colours of dynamic hover elements
✓ Single-click to start colour picking (currently only on Windows)
✓ Pick colours from Flash objects
✓ Pick colours at any zoom level
Fun fact! This extension was first created for FireFox and is now available for Google Chrome.
This extension is offered by colorzilla.com and at the writing of this article has over 2 million users (on Chrome) with a 4.5 star rating with over 2,600 reviews.
Here's what others have to say about it:
Pjae S Says:
"It's exactly what I need when I'm color matching in Photoshop, creating flyers, whatever my color matching needs, this is the quick and accurate extension to use. Perfect!"
Karen E says:
"Wonderful and works great, always! It's simple and intuitive, and I couldn't get along without it!"
Adarsh V says:
"Awesome extension. Keyboard shortcut is not working for local files."
Download ColorZilla
3) OneTab
My name is Lindsay, and I'm a chronic researcher. When I get on a roll, I can have dozens of tabs open for my amazing "research." I've had co-workers and Friends alike shutter when they look at the number of tabs I have open. Luckily for me, there is the Chrome extension "OneTab".
OneTab claims to reduce your memory usage by 95%.
Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once.
When your tabs are in the OneTab list, you will save up to 95% of memory because you will have reduced the number of tabs open in Google Chrome.
I find it very helpful for two reasons. The first one being the stated use of the extension I have too many tabs and I feel like I need to reduce some of them without closing them I can use OneTab to help with my tab-hoarding ways. The second use for One tab is for when I'm researching a specific project. I can open tabs related to inspiration websites, font selection, colour selection, and anything else relevant. I can then save all these tabs into one list and title it as the name of the project. Then whenever I'm working on the project, I can open all the tabs and easily reference all the inspirational research I've gathered for it.
This extension is offered by one-tab.com and at the writing of this article has over 2.1 million users with a 4.5+ star rating with over 12,200 reviews.
Here's what others have to say about it:
Ces L Says:
"One of my top 3 favorite extensions. I tend to open a ton of tabs when I'm doing research. So to declutter my browser, I use OneTab to save and organize all the websites I intend to read more thoroughly later. It is super easy to use. And so far, I haven't had a problem even with about 300 saved."
Jennifer E says:
"I've used this for more than a year and I love it. It really helps when I am tempted to go down the rabbit hole of the internet. When I see that I have too many windows open of things I shouldn't even be working on at the time, I can press one button and know that I can find out about the Bard Prison Initiative or Good Gifts for Graduate Students at any later date."
Anthony V says:
"I've been using this extension for a very long time and loved it. My only issue with the extension was that it didn't offer the ability to sync across devices. For someone who uses two devices daily, it can be a real hassle sifting through my history to open up sites that I need. I have found a new extension that has improved upon the concept of OneTab and is called Tabli. Thank you OneTab for your many years of service, but you did not innovate fast enough."
Download OneTab
4) Grammarly for Chrome
I use Grammarly for Chrome in conjunction with my Grammarly Premium account. I've written about Grammarly in the past and dove into some of the awesome features of it in this post (it's point #6 in this article). https://launch23.com/blog/simple-fixes-for-website-issues
From grammar and spelling to style and tone, Grammarly helps you eliminate writing errors and find the perfect words to express yourself. You'll get suggestions from Grammarly as you write on Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, and nearly everywhere else you find yourself writing. Grammarly is a writing assistant that goes deeper than grammar to offer you comprehensive writing feedback. You can be confident that your writing is not only correct but clear and concise, too.
This extension is offered by grammarly.com and at the writing of this article has over 10 + million users with a 4.5+ star rating with over 37,300 reviews.
Here's what others have to say about it:
David B Says:
"Sometimes I write in English and sometimes I write in German (try to write in German) and although my English grammar wasn't good at the best of times, with Grammarly it has improved a lot, so I'm pleased about that."
Alvaro G says:
"Great app! Easy to use, very accurate. Helps a lot with your daily writing tasks."
Joel P says:
"I like it but unfortunately cannot use it. When I activate it it causes major problem with Google Sheets. When I click on one cell it selects another and then locks the button down and then selects cells anywhere I move my mouse. When I turn Grameraly off the problem goes away. This is extremely disappointing since I loved using it."
Download Grammarly
5) Block Site
Remember me mentioning that I'm a huge fan of research? Well, if I'm honest here, sometimes my research takes me on tangents. Not ones that are productive to my work at all. That's why I'm a big fan of the Block Site extension.
It helps with staying focused and improves productivity. You can easily block any distracting or harmful websites to stop procrastination once and for all!
You can set it to block distracting websites such as social media that gets in the way of your work. You can also use it to prevent your children from accessing sites you don't want them using!
This extension is offered by blocksite.co and at the writing of this article has over 1.9 million users with a 4.5 star rating with over 24,100 reviews.
Here's what others have to say about it:
Ashok B Says:
"Loved the extension. It would be great if we could modify timer and allow the periodic mode [session of 25 minutes and 5 minutes break for an interval of like 3 hours ].."
Jo T says:
"I really like the Work Mode, but I wish that the timers had a sound or notification associated with them. Right now it's like it's not even there."
Jin K says:
"Can't even count how many hours I have saved thanks to this amazing app! Sometimes we need someone or something to stop us from wasting our time!"
Download Block Site
Thanks for reading about the 5 Chrome Extensions I use every day in my web design business. I hope you found this helpful! If you have any suggestions for extensions that didn't make the list please leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you!