I think Myntra went too far by shutting the website down. Normally a site transitioning from web to mobile doesn't make all the features available on mobile(you don't want to make the users suffer) and looks like they are trying to pull of a zuckerberg (when he made the Facebook employees use only mobile with no access to the web internally.) albeit on a bigger scale.
Myntra, India's largest fashion and apparel e-commerce portal to go mobile only
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: Myntra, India's largest fashion and apparel e-commerce portal to go mobile only
#42The last time we were discussing this on HN (wrt Flipkart's announcement), someone posted that this was about walled gardens, which I find to be a compelling argument. It is far more harder to do price comparisons, and look for same items across websites on a mobile device (switching between apps, copy-paste, no extensions). If retailers can force their customers to mobile-shopping, they retain customers and reduce c…
IMO, this is not just to discourage/avoid the price comparison issue but to mainly circumvent the competition in more of the web/SEO way.
Every e-commerce website right now is putting way too much money on PPC to make sure their site pops up for any product you search online.
What flipkart/myntra wants to achieve is this; you think of a particular shoe you want to buy. Instead of firing up your browser and see other others offers from ebay or amazon or snapdeal, they expect you to go to myntra app, search for it and buy it.
Pulling the desktop site means no such comparison nor any other offers would be shown to you instead you would get it from the app.
I am totally against this not just because this sounds stupid to me but kills our freedom of choice. I and you are smart and patient enough to browse around but not many new smartpone users would be and might just buy it from Myntra no matter the price. Especially if Myntra starts coming pre-installed on devices ( which I think would be their next move )
Re: Myntra, India's largest fashion and apparel e-commerce portal to go mobile only
#43There are some advantages of going mobile only
1. Sending deals to customers directly. (Push notifications) Increases customer loyalty.
2. Harder to compare things on mobile, compared with Web. It easier to compare things on web. Good for myntra.
3. Competitors can scrape off a website easily to create competing deals.
4. As you mentioned less dependence on google. All the money spent on SEO and can be spent somewhere else.
5. Money saved from maintaining the website.
Re: Myntra, India's largest fashion and apparel e-commerce portal to go mobile only
#44I think they are overvaluing brand loyalty here. I don't even understand people who can shop using mobile apps, especially clothes. You cannot easily compare, read reviews, get a gist of product or compare with other websites before buying. If Myntra goes with this, it would just fall off my list of sites I go to for clothes. Yes, I buy on Myntra app. That's because they give discounts on it which are app-only. But I…
People thought who would watch movies at home. Now people do that on 3.5 inch phone. Maybe its not impossible. Just a thought. So, it can be a experiment to see how it goes with myntra and then do that with flipkart too.
It's not quiet the same, people were going from theater towards home video. In India, people are going mobile-first. So in effect, it's reversed.
The problem with mobile-first is that it doesn't show that people have moved on from computing. It shows that these people aren't yet exposed to computing. In next 10 years, as 20% more Indians move to middle class, they will need to use some form of computing to conduct their livelihoods, just like the rest of us.
I get your logic, but this is like Flipkart investing 100% in mobile video because 95% revenue is coming from there today, and most Indians can't yet afford a TV. But this totally negates the fact that in next 10 years, the growth in number of people buying TV would be 10 times the current market of Flipkart.
Re: Myntra, India's largest fashion and apparel e-commerce portal to go mobile only
#45The last time we were discussing this on HN (wrt Flipkart's announcement), someone posted that this was about walled gardens, which I find to be a compelling argument. It is far more harder to do price comparisons, and look for same items across websites on a mobile device (switching between apps, copy-paste, no extensions). If retailers can force their customers to mobile-shopping, they retain customers and reduce c…
IMO, this is not just to discourage/avoid the price comparison issue but to mainly circumvent the competition in more of the web/SEO way. Every e-commerce website right now is putting way too much money on PPC to make sure their site pops up for any product you search online. What flipkart/myntra wants to achieve is this; you think of a particular shoe you want to buy. Instead of firing up your browser and see other…
Ah, this makes total sense now. The SEO thing is what made them ditch the desktop version.
Hope that this Searching becomes as easy on phones as it is on desktop and nullify their smartness :)
Re: Myntra, India's largest fashion and apparel e-commerce portal to go mobile only
#46Very bad decision. Myntra's parent Flipkart is also pushing for something similar. Not every user in India has a smartphone to use apps. They will be losing a lot of customers (like my mom, aunt, grandpa, etc) who can use websites but don't use smartphones.
They don't make these decisions lightly. They have done the market research and must have deemed it an acceptable loss to lose these desktop people.
Re: Myntra, India's largest fashion and apparel e-commerce portal to go mobile only
#47The last time we were discussing this on HN (wrt Flipkart's announcement), someone posted that this was about walled gardens, which I find to be a compelling argument. It is far more harder to do price comparisons, and look for same items across websites on a mobile device (switching between apps, copy-paste, no extensions). If retailers can force their customers to mobile-shopping, they retain customers and reduce c…
IMO, this is not just to discourage/avoid the price comparison issue but to mainly circumvent the competition in more of the web/SEO way. Every e-commerce website right now is putting way too much money on PPC to make sure their site pops up for any product you search online. What flipkart/myntra wants to achieve is this; you think of a particular shoe you want to buy. Instead of firing up your browser and see other…
This makes sense. Another thing I noticed is that once an app is installed on your phone, it acts like an always present advert. In other words, apps are now the equivalent of having an "icon on the desktop" in the old world. I really suspect that the reason they're doing this is not because discovery through the app is great, but because repeat purchases through the app is great. That would be a good reason to throw marketing money at "install our app and get this coupon" schemes.