How Maxthon can promote MX5

• Once again: this text is my opinion only, you can agree or disagree. Maxthon Team can make cool browser, but all of us see that they are losing users every year. I don't use MX anymore, but as the ones who still do I want to help. And this is my attempt.

How Maxthon can promote MX5

Sorry, but I have to say: today Maxthon is unpopular browser. You have to admit it, because it's true. How many people do know about Maxthon and how many people do use Maxthon in 2017? Not so many and not so many as MX need to be great. We need more! Much more!

Once Jeff Chen (Maxthon CEO) said that Maxthon is too small company to spend money for PR as other browsers do. But PR is literally "public relations", this is not about promotion and ads only. We already told that Maxthon have to talk with own community and tell what is going on inside the company. This is the part of PR and probably it will work, because people can not trust you if they do not know anything about you. Today we talk about other side of PR: promotion and ads. I will not teach Maxthon how they should work with ads, but I thing I know how MX can promote new browser. Now I see three path:

1. Very simple path almost without any effort
2. Simple path which is in progress already and some changes are needed
3. Difficult and dangerous path where we can attract new users or lose old

MX5, the browser for game

You know I make simple extension for VK.com (the most popular network in Russia and CIS). Maxthon doesn't have official VK page, so I just used search results for "maxthon" (here is a lot of spam is now, so I'll remove it soon). I regularly read what russian users write about the browser, I saw how they use it, I know why they need the browser and I'm very surprised that Maxthon did not notice this advantage: MX5 is one of the best browsers for games today!

This is because of Unity of course! Today not so many browsers still work with Unity. Many months Chrome does not support Unity plug-in. Firefox, Opera, Yandex and other popular browsers do not support Unity or will stop in the near future.

Game developers can not do anithing with this. All what they can is recommend to use a browser which still supports Unity: "Chrome does not support Unity anymore. Use Firefox, Opera or Yandex", "Firefox,doesn't support Unity too. Use Opera or Yandex", "Opera and Yandex stopped Unity support. Use Maxthon or Amigo".

It mean that if we talk about browsers for games the only famous competitor for Maxthon is Amigo. This is Chromuim-based browser developed by Mail.Ru Group (also known as My.com in the West) and even MRG understand that this is trash. All because of bad promotion: browser was distributed as "malware" and if you live in Russia and download Maxthon from unofficial website you probably got Amigo too. It means that people hate Amigo and they never will use it. Choosing between a little-known Maxthon and Amigo with so bad reputation almost everyone will choose Maxthon!

But it does not mean that Maxthon can just say "MX5 is the best browser for games!" and get thousands of gamers in Russia and around the world. Because browser games is not Unity only, this is Flash too. Maxthon has build-in Flash, but it's updated irregularly. In the words of Karl Mattson (vice president of Maxthon International) Maxthon "deliberately uses older version of Flash because the new ones are usually full of bugs that crash browsers".This is a bad strategy for 2017. Maxthon have to regular update build-in Flash, because MX5 uses PaperFlash and update it today is not so simpole for ordinary users.

So all what we need to promote Maxthon as the best browser for game is regular updates of Flash. The browser is almost ready for this. Just do this and make simple page about gaming on Maxthon. Tell your subscribers about several cool Unity games, remind that on Maxthon these games work without any problems. Maybe you can use MXPlay for this .This is not so popular project, but you should not forget about it. But this is about advertising and this is not my business, I just show you that you can promote you browser as browsers for gamers.

MX5, the browser with the best build-in notes

As you understand I talk about Maxnote. But promote MX5 as the best browser with build-in notes is not so simple. You can not just say it and wait for new users. Because if we talk about Maxnote as notes this is cool, but if we talk about Maxnote as the main feature for promo this too raw. Sounds difficult to understand, but I'll try to explain.

Maxthon wrote about some potential "integration" with third-party services. It was before MX5 beta and when MX5 beta has already started. So when I saw Maxnote (it was Infobox at that time) I thought that this integration with Evernote. Because it looks as Evernote! And some publications on official Maxthon page on Facebook hinted at this too. So I was sure that after official MX5 release Maxthon will explain that this is the first browser with full integration with Evernote.

Today we know that Maxthon used another third-party service. But it looks as Evernote, it work as Evernote integrated in the browser and it can be a real alternative to Evernote. And if we talk about Maxnote as about alternative Evernote, it's really cool, but... Why it's so difficult?

At first glance Maxnote seems just notes. But in fact Maxnote is combination of notes, bookmarks, and snapshots. Is it really necessary? Because I realy want to know any reason except "Look how many ways to save webpage you have in our browser!". Maxnote is cool notes, but Maxnote is a real mess! Even if you like Maxnote you have to admit: here are too many different types of data and work with bookmark in MX5 is too illogical today. But maybe this is problem for me only... I worked with Maxnote very short time, so maybe I'm wrong and everything cool with Maxnote.

So... Maxnote is cool notes, but in my opinion it make bookmarks too illogical. Just make three independent (isolated) sections: notes, bookmarks and screenshots. Maybe you should look on Opera: there are the best bookmarks today. And if we will have familiar favorites, note (with images, formatting and hyperlinks) and snapshots storege it will be realy more comfortable and convenient.

All great features in one browser

Look on Maxthon's main features: Maxnote, Passkeeper, UUMail, own multi-search engine and Quick Access (new tab), resources sniffer (media downloader), snaphots tool, splitscreen, etc. I think Maxthon can use it for promo. All of this features may be the main reason to use Maxthon, but not so many people know about this. I suggest Maxthon to show these features to people who use other browsers. But it will be very risky step. I'm not sure that this will work. So Maxthon should weigh the risks!

I think Maxthon could make extensions for other browsers. If people will see that this is something cool, we have a chance that they will download MX5. But I'm afraid that if you give me resources sniffer for Chrome I will not have any reason to use Maxthon anymore. That's why it's so dangerous!

So I think Maxthon could start from simple new tab extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Opera. This is the way to show MX5 QA for other browsers users. Now we need new users and maybe some people will see something useful in this. Maxthon can add something as "Try all QA opportunities with MX5" at the bottom of the page and maybe it will attract new users...

Don't forget about UUMail. This is not just MX5 feature, this is separate E-mail service and UUMail can be used on any browsers. So if all browsers users can use UUMail why does not Maxthon make any extension with notifications about new letters for popular browser? This may popularize the service and maybe some of new UUMail users will change browser to MX5 for better compatibility.

I'm not sure that Maxthon should release multi-search or resources sniffer as extensions for competing browsers. We have to keep some reason to use MX5, not Chrome or Firefox. But some features realy may be used to attract new users. For example, Maxthon could make snapshot extension for Chrime or other browsers, but without local saves (to U+ only). If MX will add sharing it may be realy useful.

But it's really is a very difficult question and this is realy dangerous path. Maybe we will attract new users, but maybe we will lose the old ones!

Conclusion

In summary:

1. Don't forget about regular Flash updates, don't stop Unity support and you can promote MX5 as the best browsers for games and gamers. This is a big community and Maxthon has a change to get them.
2. Make notes, bookmarks and snapshots as separate sections within Maxnote or make stangalone bookmarks manager. You should to solve the chaos issue and you will be able to promote MX5 as browser with the best build-in notes. Maxnote realy can be alternative for Evernote.
3. Make several extensions for other browsers to show its users what cool features Maxthon has. You can make new tab extensions with MX5 QA or UUMail notifier. It's not so difficult and it may attract new users on MX5. You can make the same for Passkeeper and maybe it will became alternative for Lastpass and other popular passwords managers.

I know nothing about marketing, promotion and advertising, but I know why users choose Maxthon today and maybe I understand what can attract users. I'm not sure that these will work, but these may work... or not. So this is just a few ideas how to help unjustly forgotten browser...

Comments from Maxthon

All English publications here I translate in Russian too. Аnd when Russian translation was in was in the process of preparing I got feedback from Maxthon.

1. About extensions:

The extension strategy really inspired us, maybe we can try to problem the snapshot tool.

2. About notes:

As for the Evernote promotion, we've done as SEO on Google, the result is not so good.

3. About games:

Could you help list a few games that use Unity Player? Since we've received a lot of feedback saying that Maxthon doesn't support these game well. So could you kindly give us some URLs so that we can test and optimized?

I play browser games not so offten, especially big and heavy. I played Dungeon Warfare demo, I have middle level magician in Kings Road and I finished several team deathmatches in Contact Wars (all this games are available on Facebook too). I had some friezes, but I think this is because of hardware, not software. Although it worked better in Opera... So this is your task:

• What games have problems with MX5?
• For what games Maxthon Team should optimize MX5?

That's all...
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