HYDERABAD: Suddenly, most shopping sites don’t want you to browse and shop for products. They want you to download their app and then do the shopping. And they are offering huge discounts if it is done through their app. Leading banks are offering cash back offers if the shopping is done using their cards/site. Does it make a difference if you shop on a browser or an app?
Apparently yes. “When you shop using a browser even on a phone, the moment you shut down the browser the connection is lost. But with an app, you are forever there,” says a techie.
“Do a simple trick. Find out how many apps are running in your smartphone even when you are not using any apps,” he suggests.
“Apps are very focused and you carry them around all the time. It is present when the person has the actual “intent” and it is very easy to push people when they have the intent. Which is not the same with desktop,” says Harish Krishnan, another techie who is into product design. “Myntra’s mobile-only strategy has a different angle. Most of the e-commerce sites are losing money in customer acquisition. The experiment for mobile-only is to employ all means on expanding in one channel only. Flipkart cannot do that... Myntra can. It is small, so experimentation ke liye it’s a good candidate. Also, Myntra is focused on a niche audience who use phones, while Flipkart deals with a broad audience,” says Harish, giving an insight into the evolving game of shopping on mobiles.
But the moment, you download an app on your phone, you turn into a blimp on the radar of a shopping site. The blimp is an un-named digital profile that has your age, location (upscale or downmarket), preferences, behaviour, travel habits and even eating habits. Match it with a big data number cruncher, the computer can even predict what you are likely to do.