Top 10 Time-Saving Tools For Small Business Owners

When you are running a small business anything that makes life a little easier is a good thing. We’ve been doing this for a long time, and we’ve tried out many, many tools for a variety of different tasks. So we decided to round up some of our favorites, the ones we use every day, and put them in a list for you. Let us know what you think and if you have any to add, we are always looking for great new tools!

Bitly

Did you know that custom links get 34% more clicks? Bitly is a link management platform that enables you to shorten, customize and track links. They also offer comprehensive analytics on every link—like clicks, geographic data, and top referring channels – taking the guesswork out of your link performance. Nobody likes guesswork.

TinyPNG

Image optimization is super important for SEO purposes. Large file sizes can increase page loading time which is not good for the customer experience. TinyPNG reduces the file size of your images (PNG or JPG) by decreasing the number of colors in the image so fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is nearly invisible!

Awesome Screenshot

Take a screenshot of anything, load it into Awesome Screenshot, and then you can write notes on it, circle things, point with arrows, blur sensitive info, crop, and more! Once you are ready to share it with a co-worker or client, you can either download the image or grab the URL. It’s super handy for communicating website changes.

ColorPick Eyedropper

This is an eyedropper tool that allows you to select color values from webpages, images and more. You’ll see both the RGB and HEX color codes. You get a zoomed view of the pixels which can be helpful to determine if things are correctly aligned, rendering as expected or correct color codes are being used.

OneTab

This is a handy tool for those who have too many tabs open at once. Simply click the OneTab icon and all of your tabs will convert into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once. Using this tool will save up to 95% of your memory. Who doesn’t need a little help saving their memory?

Lucidchart

Lucidchart is a visual workspace used for building flowcharts, creating mockups, expressing ideas, and more. You can collaborate on drawing, revising and sharing charts and diagrams. They have hundreds of templates to get you started, charts can be exported as several different file types, and they offer many integrations. 

Compress PDF

This is a PDF compressor tool that reduces the size of your PDF files. It allows you to adjust the compression quality so that you can get a perfect result. They take security very seriously, a ll file transfers are encrypted, and once your files are compressed and downloaded, they are deleted from their server within one hour.

Toggl

Toggl is a simple time tracking tool that produces reports that can be exported into Excel, CSV or PDF’s. The project dashboard can compare project progress to estimated time. Assign billable rates to your tasks, and make sure you’re paid fairly for all your work. Best of all, if you forget to track your time, they’ll remind you!

Grammarly

Grammarly helps you compose clear, mistake-free writing and checks the tone of your message before you send it. It will check grammar, spelling, style and tone. It can be used with Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. It’s like having your own personal editor!

Figma

Figma is a platform where people can design together live and in real time, no matter where they are on planet earth. Multiple people can log into a design at once and simultaneously make changes to it.  It can be used for designing, wireframing or prototyping. Co-workers and clients can give feedback right where the work is being done.

Luminary Digital has worked with a lot of startups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. We understand the struggles. We can help. Contact us today for a free consult!

About the Author

Keri Stafford is Director of Marketing & Operations at Luminary Digital. She can find a reason to use a spreadsheet for just about anything and is so obsessed with content marketing that she won’t stop talking about it. Tweet to Keri: @keristafford.