Advertise more Xara !

Over the years I’ve been completely satisfied with Xara. I don’t mind the yearly model, and I love what Xara accomplishes for me. For my needs which are many are answered. Any questions I have I answered on the board.
Having 49 years in broadcasting and marketing, now retired, I don’t understand why Xara and Magix don’t advertise more.
Xara offers a toolbox which is very inviting. Xara needs buzz. Magix sometimes does promotion, but nothing in Magix even comes close to what Xara can do.

Wordpress slogs along, with monthly rates, and costly add ons. Many of these are answered in Xara. But I never hear peep about this package of software that does everything.

Many have left the Adobe herd, to move to Affinity. That’s when I thought that Xara might have advertised heavily to gain more users. I’ve moved several parties to join Xara. Once using the software they love it!

This is meant as a discussion point only. Why can’t Xara advertise more?

xara gmbh network; they do it a lot apparently on social media and elsewhere; they are aiming for the office based customer now, corporate with big or small C; 'cold advertising' in the traditional sense is possibly not good value for money compared to 'word of mouth/twitter/facebook... from peer to peer

for all I know magix is the same

I have not seen nor known many professionals using xara for their business. Proof of that is next to no one near me in the metropolitan Toronto area which has millions of people. The ones that run a business and make money are using adobe products and some use Serif. Xara desktop application therefore is and will never compete nor wants to compete with those companies nor their web design capacity is in par with other web design platforms out there. So what are you left with, the cloud +

This is their saving grace and this is their only way to survive. They tagged along Xara desktop on the offer just so that they can keep it alive with a feeding tube.

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Originally Posted by behzad

I have not seen nor known many professionals using xara for their business

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if by this you mean those who are in the business of taking on clients I would tend to agree

the niche that xara appear to be exploiting is to offer a product that enables companies to do the work themselves; lets leave open the question of whether the standard of work will be the same, what it does mean is that companies that go down this route do not have to contract out work and so, in theory at least, can save both money and time whilst still producing an acceptable product

Yes I meant businesses that work with Xara desktop (design agencies). The work that a good designer can produce is not on the same par with what templates give. But people in general are cheap and do not want to pay for design when templates and drag and drop web programs are plenty.

iI know people who think 'fancy websites' are a waste of time and money that would be better spent on social media promotion and advertising for example - on the basis that a website just has to function, it is no longer an advertising tool in itself

For sure. It is a business card. Social media advertising is another ball game on its own. Nothing that novice person can do properly same goes with SEO. People think they can go cheap on those and get results but that is not the case. I hate cheap clients.

Hate to mention another product, but Wordpress comes up in conversation a lot. The dirty secret is the initial monthly from WP does practically nothing. If you need a gallery, that’s more cost and another add-on, and it goes on and on. Many software products now offer blog integration. I’d agree that the Cloud app is not up to snuff yet and Affinity has not put out a web developer as yet.
But I do get excited when I can show a client that Xara is not that hard to learn.
The client discovers that Xara can draw, and also produce a newsletter without that much trouble.
Professionally, if a client farms out a website they don’t care what programs are used, because they farmed it out.
I think Xara walks the fine line of making the cloud version not too difficult to learn as Xara pro. It’s a very fine line, and must include templates in the cloud version that challenges WP templates.
Perhaps it’s time for a more aggressive approach, dropping the price of Pro+ and Cloud. People can learn the cloud version, then dabble in Xara pro at the same time. I believe @acorn or @egg mentioned a plan such as this a while ago.
I’d market it “Discover Xara” or “All in one” Xara.
Aggressively sell a product that you’re proud of.

agressively sell to whom ?
agressively sell where, by what means...

xara gmbh was set up with venture capital - that probably means their business model was agreed with their backers and may not be easy to change

and it pre-supposes that the current business model needs tweaking; I am not convinced that it does when looked at from the company's point of view, but of course I cannot be sure

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that Xara can draw

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no it can't - it can however enable a user to develop and utilse a particular set of drawing skills

you may think this is me being pedantic, but the web is now full of programs that enable users to draw; the realisation that a program you already have/use can do this is one thing, singling it out from the crowd cold is another