How creativity & technology are getting married through digital revolution? Hundreds of apps have suddenly emerged that are lending a helping hand for entrepreneurs to not only sustain but also to scale their businesses.

Creative technologies now play a crucial role in businesses. Hundreds of apps have suddenly emerged that are lending a helping hand for entrepreneurs to not only sustain but also to scale their businesses.

As much as 90 percent creative professionals are optimistic about the future as creative tech is increasingly becoming an integral part of businesses. This positive outlook is squarely attributed to the digital revolution that brought creativity and technology together.

50 percent creative professionals are using mobile devices to present creative concepts, 35 percent using mobile to collaborate for their work, 43 percent using mobile as their digital portfolios and 42 percent feeling empowered to create content anywhere as revealed by Adobe APAC Creative Pulse survey.

Enhance business productivity

Third party applications for web designers enable startups save the considerable amount of time and effort that can be used for resolving more impending issues using the same amount of resources.

Pulkit Ahuja, Founder & Director, Technology and Operations, Unlockar Apps, says, "Business productivity is enhanced as the programmers do not have to get their hands dirty in menial issues and can instead indulge themselves into solving higher order problems relating to logics and optimisation."

Moreover, a closer look suggests that these applications indeed have a trickledown effect on a startup's revenues and hence its bottom line. For example, apps like TinyPNG help designers reduce the image sizes being used on a website therefore considerably reducing the load time for a website. And the load time has a direct impact on the website's rankings and usage pattern. Although a visible connection might not be noticeable at first between revenues and usage of apps, the app acts as an enabler for users to visit site often.

Similarly, on the backend, apps like JScrambler facilitate data encoding and protection thereby preventing users' code from being unwantedly used by any other entity just by reverse engineering the website. This ensures that the hours and resources spent on creating something innovative remains safe against piracy and illegitimate use.

"A recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting shows that companies embracing creativity outperform peers in revenue, market share and competitive leadership. With so much at stake, it is important to check the pulse of creative professionals; to understand their beliefs, aspirations, motivations and challenges and work with them for business success. Adobe APAC

Creative Pulse survey has been released for the first time in the APAC region and reflects the issues and opportunities facing creative professionals in the region," says, Umang Bedi, MD (South Asia), Adobe.

Creative apps drive productivity

Adobe study further revealed that 72 per cent consider new technologies as the topmost catalyst for driving change. New creative applications for web designers ensure that the product the users built is compatible on a real time basis. Therefore, use of such apps prevents code redo in majority of deployments.

Creative applications for web designers can build web pages or application easily. It helps in optimization of screen resolutions and devices, allows designers more time to focus on enhancing the look and feel, prevents users to direct HTML codes and makes it easier to detect errors with designs with these applications.

"Using these apps, tracking of changes has become easier. Domain expertise is not needed in areas for which apps are already available. These apps offer security to our work and finally they make optimisations much easier," says Ahuja.

IndiaOnline, an exceptional network of more than 350 India-centric portals uses Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Visual Studio.

On the same note, Rahul Jalan, MD, Indiaonline.in, avers, "With a host of in-built features to design websites and applications, the time required to perfect any project has shortened. With all these applications coming out with new versions, the features keep on adding and it becomes far easier to create designs optimized for all screen resolutions and cater to all user behaviours easily."

Creative on the go

Designing for Web is all about understanding visitor requirements and ensuring seamless access to all website features like products, services and content etc. Applications like Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc help web designers to a great extend in planning and building designs which work for every browser and screen resolution. These applications have a variety of inbuilt features which reduces a lot of time and effort and eventually helps in building better websites, thereby benefiting businesses directly.

"These applications help optimize websites for all user behaviours, screen resolution etc. ensuring websites look perfect to users accessing these from anywhere like desktops, mobiles, tablets etc. More perfection in the look and feel of the website means users don't drop out of your website because they cannot access the website properly," says Jalan.

With the availability of multiple options to design, much more attractive web pages increase the user engagement on a website. This is directly proportional to the revenue a business does and with a variety of in-built features for designing, it reduces the time required to design and perfect any project.