
Myntra, India's largest fashion and apparel e-commerce portal to go mobile only - zuron7
http://myntra.myntassets.com/app_only/letter.html
======
prateek_mir
I don't understand the point in shutting down the website. There's a large
audience in India which browses for products on e-commerce website while
casually browsing other stuff. Taking the service _entirely_ to an app based
platform isolates a lot of such customers.

Another point is that the there is a section of audience which doesn't
necessarily use smart phones, or won't use smart phones for making such
purchases, who now won't access myntra.

Indian e-commerce space is evolving, and with so many players in the field,
the ultimate user would explore all the other options before committing to a
purchase (unless they are extremely loyal to myntra), and now it seems to me
that with the platform restricted to mobile/tab application, myntra has made a
huge mistake.

But it would be interesting to see how this pans out.

~~~
nine_k
I can suppose that keeping the web site up to date costs significant
resources, while channeling only a small percent of sales.

Not having web presence at all is strange, though. Possibly they'll shut down
the e-commerce web site, just leaving a static site with contacts and the
links to the mobile apps.

~~~
prateek_mir
I am not well versed with the costs of keeping such a site up, but a scaled
down version can be always be maintained using S/IaaS solutions.

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jitix
Very 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.

~~~
hiphopyo
Isn't Firefox OS with their mobile web platform about to flood into India as
well?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519336)

~~~
drvortex
Huh? Why India? The link talks about Africa. The Indian mobile market has been
completely taken over by Android. About 50% of molbile phones sold in India
are cheap Chinese phones. But even those these days come with 1Ghz processors
and 4 inch screens (albeit of poor quality).

These run Android fine. Firefox OS is at the moment clearly heading for the
no-mobile-phones-yet market and offering a low-end phone. India is somewhere
in the mostly-mid-range-mobile-phones zone now.

------
captn3m0
The 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 chances of being second-guessed at prices. There are a
lot of Chrome Extensions that do price comparisons and people often cross-
browse for the same products looking for discounts. Going mobile-only will
discourage this behavior.

~~~
vidyesh
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 )

~~~
sriku
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.

------
achow
Data makes the move look compelling..

"From Zero users a year ago, currently about 95% of Myntra’s traffic is being
channeled through its mobile app. Mobile accounts for 70% of its total
revenues.. Of the total time Indians spend on the internet, 90% is through
mobile phones."

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2015/05/12/in-
global-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/saritharai/2015/05/12/in-global-first-
indias-largest-fashion-portal-myntra-ditches-website-goes-mobile-only/)

~~~
vidyesh
Actually most articles and even Myntra itself is missing one big variable
which has caused this '95%' mobile traffic.

The mobile only offers. I myself have fallen to those offers, downloaded the
App, used the mobile-only offers and bought items. But when no such offer is
provided I prefer browsing and buying from the desktop site. For the past few
months Myntra and Flipkart have been running such mobile-only offers. And I
get it why they are doing this but they fail to realise ( I am talking out of
my depth maybe ) that eventually when they want to make money and the offers
are normal/stopped people would not necessarily use the mobile app. Myntra
alternatives are many in India.

~~~
pranayairan
Completely agree, pushing app only offer is key reason people using there app.
It is crazy, u promote app everywhere, give heavy app discounts and then say
95% traffic is from app. The main reason i think is notifications, they can
bug users even if they don't want to see the offer, this way they will be
retaining more users. I get a offer notification every day.

------
mateerladnam
an theory I read was, forcing users to use an app gives better monopoly. users
can't drift off to other sites to compare deals; apps will monitor you and
study behaviour, and help their marketing strategy; they bug you with deals
all the time making you use the app more often than you'd have otherwise( idea
from Facebook); flipkart n Amazon did this with the mobile site, flipkart is
testing the waters of the next stage by using it's myntra division.

------
kul_
hurmm I really dont understand this, How much it would cost for these
multimillion dollar companies to maintain a desktop version!?

To my limited knowledge this is only an effort on client side as the apis to
interact on server would be the same be it desktop or mobile.

------
shatgupt
I have doubts about the data that 95% of the traffic is now through app. Lots
of people, including myself, do shopping through desktop only. Its too
cumbersome to flick through so many items on mobile!

------
ing33k
additional comment :

this is purely a fashion e-commerce portal , I generally want to look at the
images of the clothes in good quality on a bigger screen before I buy. I don't
think I can get a good overview of the apparel even from my S5 .

------
nine_k
I wonder how hard would it be to reverse-engineer the APIs used by the app and
put out a web site using them.

I also wonder how hard would it be for Myntra to create a basic web site using
their own app's APIs.

------
arihant
I 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 simply cannot put myself through horror of clothes browsing on
a mobile phone. Thanks, but no thanks.

~~~
mkagenius
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.

~~~
arihant
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.

------
RaSoJo
Either Flipkart is using Myntra to test the waters.

Or their investors have some goal to become profitable ASAP
[http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/myntra-
ai...](http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/myntra-aims-to-
become-indias-first-profitable-e-tailer-115051201309_1.html)

I guess the call was to become profitable no matter what. And if it comes at
the cost of shaving off a bit of the Topline (Desktop Revs), then so be it!

------
nkg
Not one Indian model on that website.

------
thewhitetulip
Not every Indian user has access to smartphone at all times, in majority of
cases people buy stuff while doing other stuff online, maybe from home or
office, those people won't be able to buy anything.

second of all there is nothing called as brand loyalty in ecommerce, the
website offering cheapest deals wins, I used to buy many books from flipkart
because they give good deals on books, but while buying other stuff I check
every other major e commerce website.

------
theFifthHead
It might have something to do with their positioning as a m-commerce than an
e-commerce where amazon is already a global leader and the way things have
been going sooner or later flipkart will have to give up the coveted #1 spot.
However if they transition into a mobile only commerce they can create hype
(illusory but nonetheless) about being a market leader and innovator in their
category and attract further investment or an IPO down the line.

------
kimmentr
WTH! Either start as Mobile only app and be successfull (Eg: Whatsapp) (or)
Start a Website and gradually introduce mobile apps (Eg: Google) (or) Start a
retail service, use website as entry point, then introduce mobile apps (Eg:
Amazon)

Myntra model is backwards. Start retail, use desktop website, start mobile
site, think about mobile app, hate desktops, shutdown desktop website,
shutdown mobile site.

I don't get it!!

~~~
XorNot
I question the wisdom of WhatsApp's move anyway. It seems like the vast
majority of my communications suddenly moved to Facebook messenger, in part
because it's right there in the desktop website.

------
snambi
There 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.

------
bozoUser
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.

------
ing33k
any one wanna bet they will re-enable the website access after a while ?

------
piyush_soni
On the other hand, thinking about the possibility of every website starting to
have its own app we have to install is scary.

------
ungzd
90's return, but with Android and iOS apps instead of Windows clients written
in Delphi and Visual Basic.

------
sumitviii
This sounds like what Peter Thiel mentions in monopoly chapter in his book. A
restaurant marketing itself as south indian food place, and ignoring the fact
that they still have to compete with that pizza place next door.

------
sivalingam
It seems we can soon expects the closing date for Myntra. Its not a good move.

~~~
XorNot
Also only 70% of your sales coming through mobile leaves a big minority that
are not. Can they even afford to remove 30% of their revenue potentially? Is
maintaining a website _really_ costing that much?

------
sjshelby
So stupid. Taco Bell tried it and fairly quickly realized how stupid it was.

~~~
btown
At least Taco Bell was the exclusive way to get your Taco Bell fix. Myntra is
just an e-tailer, and many of their products you can get elsewhere. So it
makes even _less_ sense than Taco Bell's move.

Interestingly, you can still access Myntra's non-frontpage:
[http://www.myntra.com/women](http://www.myntra.com/women)

~~~
manojlds
I guess you didn't even try to open
[http://www.myntra.com](http://www.myntra.com)

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macspoofing
I don't get it, just as I don't get why all those chat apps (BBM, KiK,
WhatsApp) refuse to create a desktop client on similar philosophical grounds.

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ohitsdom
This will not end well.

