Myntra has begun rolling out a mobile website, a major change in strategy for the e-retailer which went app-only back in May this year. It’s possible the company’s application-exclusive plan has failed and the move had resulted in the brand losing traffic.
The new Myntra mobile website looks like it’s still in its early stages with only parts of the e-commerce site’s catalogue online. The brand’s parent company recently announced a hybrid webapp tool dubbed Flipkart Lite which attempts to combine an app-like experience within a browser. Not to be left behind, rival Snapdeal launched its own Snap-Lite mobile site.
Flipkart claims over 70% of its traffic comes from phones, with most consumers opting to access it through a browser. Apparently only 4% of users actually download the app version of a website when asked to do so. Reasons for not wanting to could vary from connectivity issues to running short on storage space in their smartphone.
According to MediaNama, the Myntra mobile site only displays the company’s catalog right now and doesn’t allow people to buy anything from the page. Instead, they have to complete their purchase through the app. It’s possible this is temporary and will change in the future, unless the brand is setting up the page to only act as a gateway to its application.
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One reason for employing such a strategy may be to start getting visitors via Google. Many websites depend on the search engine to get customers and Myntra was probably losing out on a significant source of traffic by being app-only. This way, it will start appearing in search results again.