Myntra, the biggest fashion e-commerce website in India took a bold step and took down their website last week in an effort to draw more traffic to their mobile application. According to company quotes, 90% of their traffic and 70% of the orders are from their application.
It might seem absurd to those of us who have been using a desktop for as long as we can remember, but India has just started experiencing fast Internet on cellular devices, and buying a smartphone makes a lot more sense because it does all the work a computer would, at a much cheaper price. Adding seamless applications to this combination generates a better user experience.
“Fashion is a very personal experience. We believe that only mobile can truly deliver this experience as it captures user’s lifestyle and context in manner that no other medium does. Think of all the hardware and software features that one can leverage like camera, contact, location etc. to understand the user’s context and deliver the experience that is deeply personalized,”
-Mukesh Bansal, Myntra CEO.
Since the launch of the new strategy, sales have dropped 10% for the online retailer. Amazon and SnapDeal, the competitors, have shown no interest of following Myntra’s footsteps. They believe that a large amount of their users still use PCs to shop online, and they don’t want to force them to use a specific medium to access the website. Myntra defends their move by saying that they can focus development on the app, thus making the experience better for everyone.
Their move could be promising, or the 10% loss might be static, only time will show.