Running a small business in Winchester or across Hampshire means every minute counts. You’re juggling client calls, managing projects, and trying to stay on top of industry trends: all while keeping costs down. The good news? You might already have a powerful productivity tool sitting right there in your browser.
Microsoft Edge has evolved far beyond basic web browsing. It’s now packed with features that can genuinely boost your team’s efficiency without requiring expensive software subscriptions or lengthy training sessions.
Split Your Screen, Double Your Focus
The Challenge: You’re researching suppliers while comparing quotes in another tab, constantly clicking back and forth between windows. Sound familiar?
The Solution: Edge’s split screen feature lets you view two web pages side by side within the same tab. Simply right-click on any link and select “Open link in split window.”
Real Winchester Business Scenario: Imagine you’re a local marketing agency comparing client websites against competitors. Instead of juggling multiple tabs, you can have the client’s site on the left and their competitor on the right, making it easy to spot opportunities and present clear recommendations to your clients.
Pro tip: This works brilliantly for online training sessions too. Keep the training material on one side and your notes or work application on the other.
Vertical Tabs: Tame Your Tab Chaos
The Problem: When you’re deep in research or managing multiple client projects, traditional horizontal tabs become an unreadable mess of truncated titles.
The Fix: Click the vertical tabs icon (looks like two rectangles) in your toolbar to stack tabs vertically along the left side of your browser.
Hampshire SME Example: A Winchester-based accountancy firm handling multiple client files can name and colour-code tab groups: red for urgent client queries, blue for research, green for compliance updates. When you hover over each tab, the full title appears, making it simple to find what you need instantly.
Bonus: You can collapse the vertical tab bar to save screen space while keeping everything organised.
Collections: Your Digital Research Assistant
The Situation: You’re gathering information for a client proposal, saving links in bookmarks, taking screenshots, and losing track of where you found that perfect case study.
The Game-Changer: Edge Collections lets you save text, images, links, and notes from any webpage into organised folders that sync across all your devices.
Local Business Application: A Hampshire-based consultancy researching government grants can create a “Funding Opportunities” collection, saving relevant sections from gov.uk pages, eligibility criteria, and deadline information all in one place. When it’s time to write the application, everything is there waiting.
To use Collections:
- Click the Collections icon (looks like a folder with a plus sign) in your toolbar
- Create a new collection and give it a meaningful name
- As you browse, click “Add current page” or drag specific content into your collection
Immersive Reader: Cut Through the Noise
The Distraction: Important industry articles buried under adverts, pop-ups, and sidebar clutter making it hard to focus on the actual content.
The Solution: Immersive Reader strips away everything except the text and images that matter, giving you a clean, customisable reading experience.
Perfect for Winchester Professionals: Whether you’re reading the latest NCSC guidance on cybersecurity threats or studying new regulations that affect your sector, Immersive Reader helps you focus on what matters. You can even adjust text size, spacing, and background colour to reduce eye strain during those long research sessions.
Access it: Look for the book icon in your address bar when reading articles, or press F9.
Workspaces: Seamless Team Collaboration
The Challenge: Your team needs to review the same set of websites, documents, and research materials, but sharing dozens of links via email or Teams gets messy fast.
The Smart Solution: Workspaces let you create and share entire browser setups with your team members.
Hampshire Business Scenario: A Basingstoke-based design agency working on a client rebrand can create a workspace containing the client’s current website, competitor sites, inspiration galleries, and project briefs. The entire team accesses the same organised set of resources with one shared link.
How to set it up:
- Open all the tabs you want to share
- Click the Workspaces icon (people icon) in your toolbar
- Create a new workspace and invite team members
- Everyone gets access to the same organised tab layout
Quick Wins: More Edge Features That Save Time
Collections Export: Turn your research into actionable documents by exporting Collections to Word or Excel: perfect for client reports or project summaries.
Drop Feature: Send links, notes, or files to yourself across devices instantly. Spotted an interesting article on your phone? Drop it to access later on your desktop.
Efficiency Mode: When your laptop battery is running low during client meetings, Efficiency Mode reduces resource usage to keep you running longer.
Sleeping Tabs: Edge automatically puts unused background tabs to sleep after two hours, freeing up memory and keeping your computer running smoothly: especially helpful when you’re running multiple applications for different clients.
Making the Switch: Getting Your Team On Board
The beauty of these Edge features is that they don’t require extensive training or expensive software licences. Most of your team probably already uses Edge (or can easily switch), and these tools integrate naturally with existing Microsoft 365 subscriptions that many Hampshire businesses already have.
Start small: Pick one feature that addresses your biggest daily frustration: perhaps vertical tabs if you’re constantly losing important websites, or Collections if research takes up significant time.
Lead by example: Once you’ve mastered a feature and seen the time savings, share it with your team through a quick demonstration rather than lengthy training sessions.
Ready to Boost Your Productivity?
These Microsoft Edge features represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to leveraging technology to boost productivity in your Hampshire business. The key is knowing which tools can genuinely save time for your specific workflows and ensuring your team has the support to implement them effectively.
At BITSmart Technology Ltd, we help Winchester and Hampshire businesses optimise their existing technology investments before recommending expensive new solutions. Sometimes the biggest productivity gains come from making better use of what you already have.
Want to discover more time-saving tech tips tailored to your business? We’re offering free productivity consultations for local SMEs, covering everything from Microsoft Edge optimisation to Windows efficiency shortcuts that could save your team hours each week.
Book your free productivity consultation and let’s identify the quick wins that’ll give your Hampshire business the competitive edge it deserves.
