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India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

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Re: India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

#11

Post by protomyth »

boulos wrote: post #5

If they really turn off their website entirely, they'd get no traffic from search engines. I assume this means they'll either keep product pages up for the robots (and then redirect you to the mobile app), or that their 40M registered users simply go directly to Flipkart when they want to buy something.

If there description in the article is correct, I would bet on users going directly to the app to buy something. I bet a lot of discovery is word of mouth and traditional media.

I would bet on leaving the website as a catalog and nothing more. Shouldn't be too hard to dump the database to get product pages.

Re: India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

#12

Post by arihant »

Another Indian e-commerce site Tradus did this last year, and they failed so badly they went back to stealth mode.

Having said that, Flipkart might be just big enough to actually pull this off. I must note that it is highly irritating. They already shut down their mobile site ages ago with a "Download the app or go die" page. This is extremely irritating especially when you follow links from e-mails, their app fails to catch it and mobile site is giant "Ha Ha".

For this to work they would have to significantly boost the quality of their apps. It is just not that great on either iOS or Android. Flipkart has made apps for insane amount of platforms though, even S40, to probably support this decision. Even my Android Wear has a Flipkart app.

EDIT: FYI, Flipkart didn't really say that they will shut it down. All they said is that their mobile traffic grew 10-fold and in the next year they might become totally mobile. He was obviously referring to traffic, with no word about shutting down website.

Re: India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

#14

Post by hiby007 »

I am an regular Flipkart User, and I do not like this behaviour, Flipkart is forcing me to move to an mobile app, just to have better control and tracking.

They have already stopped supporting the mobile website, and it simply instructs you to download the app to continue.

This is the moment I have completely stopped using flipkart and moved to amazon.in

I like website more than app, both gets the job done, where as In an mobile app I have to give various permission which is not required for a simple E-Commerce website (which suggest the are just doing it for the data)

See the list of permission used by the app below.

  Device & app history
  retrieve running apps
  read sensitive log data
  Identity
  find accounts on the device
  Location
  approximate location (network-based)
  precise location (GPS and network-based)
  Photos/Media/Files
  read the contents of your USB storage
  modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
  Camera
  take pictures and videos
  Wi-Fi connection information
  view Wi-Fi connections
  Device ID & call information
  read phone status and identity
  Other
  receive data from Internet
  use accounts on the device
  view network connections
  full network access
  control flashlight
  prevent device from sleeping
  read Google service configuration

Re: India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

#15

Post by wpietri »

sgrove wrote: post #9
CydeWeys wrote: post #2

Unreal. Do they really expect it to cost more to maintain their web presence in addition to their mobile app than their web presence will make them? If you already have a back-end for servicing all of those mobile apps, is having an HTML front-end really that difficult? I vastly prefer doing almost anything I can think of on a real desktop with big displays and a good keyboard over a mobile app. Am I that out of touc…

What about Gopher? FTP? Usenet? AOL? WAP? HTTP/HTML is just another way of consuming the content, but the justification for using it over other mediums is that usage is high enough. If it falls below a certain threshold, then it makes sense to throw it out, just like the other low-performing mediums. Although walled-garden reasoning may also play a factor, a simple market-driven analysis would be sufficient in many c…

Not quite. Absolute traffic levels don't matter. The only time it makes sense to throw it out, as the parent comment suggested, is if the maintenance costs exceed the benefits. Even if the usage is low compared to mobile, it only makes sense to stop if it's a long-term net negative.

Personally, this makes me suspect bad architecture. If they've got well-factored APIs, the additional cost of maintaining a modest web presence should be pretty low. From what they describe, mobile is now somewhere between 40 and 60% of their traffic. Even if they were pretty sure that the trend to mobile would continue, why wouldn't they just hedge their bets by investing less in the HTML front end until the web traffic is really negligible? Few people use faxes anymore, but a lot of businesses still publish fax numbers just in case.

Assuming that this isn't purely internal politics, then my best guess is that they have a lot of terrible web code. Somebody saying, "Mobile is the one and only future! Look, shiny future!" gives people a chance to declare bankruptcy on a lot of technical debt while appearing as forward-thinking leaders, rather than bozos who made a giant mess.

Re: India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

#16

Post by notatoad »

boulos wrote: post #5

If they really turn off their website entirely, they'd get no traffic from search engines. I assume this means they'll either keep product pages up for the robots (and then redirect you to the mobile app), or that their 40M registered users simply go directly to Flipkart when they want to buy something.

Google is indexing apps and prompting an install from the SERP when they return in-app results. I doubt that it's as effective from an SEO perspective as having a good mobile website, but it is supported.

Re: India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

#17

Post by MichaelGG »

hiby007 wrote: post #14

I am an regular Flipkart User, and I do not like this behaviour, Flipkart is forcing me to move to an mobile app, just to have better control and tracking. They have already stopped supporting the mobile website, and it simply instructs you to download the app to continue. This is the moment I have completely stopped using flipkart and moved to amazon.in I like website more than app, both gets the job done, where as…

I've never used Flipkart as I'm not in India, but just browsing to their website seems to work on Firefox on Android. I just check the "Request Desktop Site". It's a bit janky but doesn't seem unusable.

Though I agree, taking business elsewhere is a better response to this kind of privacy-invasion. (And Google should shoulder a ton of the blame here, as they not only allow but encourage this kind of shit.)

Re: India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

#19

Post by nahname »

CydeWeys wrote: post #2

Unreal. Do they really expect it to cost more to maintain their web presence in addition to their mobile app than their web presence will make them? If you already have a back-end for servicing all of those mobile apps, is having an HTML front-end really that difficult? I vastly prefer doing almost anything I can think of on a real desktop with big displays and a good keyboard over a mobile app. Am I that out of touc…

>Why would anyone, that has a choice in the matter, prefer a mobile app for shopping.

That's the clincher. No desktop, no choice.

Re: India’s Flipkart to shut down website, thanks to popularity of mobile

#20

Post by r00fus »

sgrove wrote: post #9
CydeWeys wrote: post #2

Unreal. Do they really expect it to cost more to maintain their web presence in addition to their mobile app than their web presence will make them? If you already have a back-end for servicing all of those mobile apps, is having an HTML front-end really that difficult? I vastly prefer doing almost anything I can think of on a real desktop with big displays and a good keyboard over a mobile app. Am I that out of touc…

What about Gopher? FTP? Usenet? AOL? WAP? HTTP/HTML is just another way of consuming the content, but the justification for using it over other mediums is that usage is high enough. If it falls below a certain threshold, then it makes sense to throw it out, just like the other low-performing mediums. Although walled-garden reasoning may also play a factor, a simple market-driven analysis would be sufficient in many c…

No, the justification for HTTP/HTML is that the client required to use these platforms covers almost your entire addressable market.
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