Flipkart-owned Myntra has gone from being app-only to having a mobile website. The experiment lasted about nine months. The fashion e-commerce firm may have done so to increase its reach and to attract new customers.
Incidentally, the development comes less than a week after Myntra.com's co-founder who had sold the fashion e-tailer to Flipkart for a consideration of $300 million in May, quit Flipkart where he was head of commerce and advertising biz.
Myntra on Tuesday relaunched its mobile website, probably an admittance that Myntra’s app-only strategy, conceived to purportedly better customer experience, did not deliver. But, Myntra has claimed that its active monthly user base has nearly doubled to around 8 million since it decided to go app-only.
One can now even shop from the fashion etailer after scanning their website of Myntra.
Myntra’s at an interaction with the Media in January 2016 had claimed that its annualised gross sales or GMV (gross market value) which is the MRP of the goods sold in e-commerce parlance, was $800 million. This, the c-commerce firm said was an increase of 70 per cent from a year ago period.
Speaking on the app-only strategy, Rohit Bhatiani, Director, Deloitte in India, told Express, "Most consumers in tier I and tier II cities do not enjoy the luxury of the bandwidth that consumers in big cities have. Lot of the people shop online using computers."
Also, a lot of people like to look at multiple sites before taking a call on shopping for a good. Also, it's easier to compare products between sites and it can't be done if you shop on apps. "Most people like to compare prices across sites and thus they open multiple windows on desktops. This is not possible when you shop using an app," he added.
Bhatiani added that most people use multiple devices. Thus, there are multiple permutations that need to be considered. He said that many of the people cannot download more than five or six apps on their phone and that can be another hurdle in an app-only strategy.