It is certainly a brave decision. The future is mobile. Some claim the future is apps and no m-web. There could be some truth there, but the real question would be on the benefits of going off the PC/mobile-web completely. Let’s take the PC-web question first.
Focus could be a key point gained. There’s significant upkeep one could avoid, but the PC experience is already build for most players, and is easier to build if not. The PC experience does have advantages - much more decision-information on one screen, an experience users are used to and so on - and there may actually be a segment of users used to the PC experience who is not used to the mobile experience. On the other hand on mobile there are significant unknowns - it’s something that is evolving as we speak. But that said and done, mobile is a significant portion of the eCommerce future. But it is not 100% by any projection.
And again, the same question - would it be wise to discount the benefits of the PC-web? Is there something inherently distracting or destructive about maintaining the PC experience? One could always build a responsive experience where one has a shop-front for every access-point. The engineering doesn’t need to be different - and while smartphone numbers beat the PC numbers by a mile, those aren’t population numbers, just ship-outs. I haven’t seen the Comscore numbers for mobile-access since very few Indian eCommerce sites are covered or unified, but I believe the page-view and minute numbers would be much lower than the 50-90% traffic claimed by most eCommerce sites - this percentage is most probably the visit percentage. And we know how GMVs are not that closely linked to just visits.
Arguably, the quality of experience on a PC still beats the mobile today. There are enough pointers to lower conversion on mobile - smaller screens, more impulse less mission mindsets on an average, reluctance to use complex payment schema (read non-COD), a fresher TG and so on.
The worst reason to go mobile-only I heard recently was that app-downloads increase when a website goes down - does that even sound like a long-term strategy? It’ll only be a spike - we all know it’s about being most easily accessible across all channels for existing and new users - that’s religion unless you have a reason better than those above. More app installs is a nice metric, but one has to watch the cost at which that comes. If your cost per install is already way higher than the user’s lifetime value, the last thing you’d want to do is add the cost of lost-GMV to it - GMV lost-to-competition to be precise.
It gets worse. Some players in the Industry today don’t want to fire their engineering or product resources. They just want these people who were hired and trained for the PC-web front-end to start creating apps. Not fair or productive, I’d say.
There’s even more. The advertising story is less effective on the mobile-app. If a business wants to make money from space-selling like Alibaba does, the mobile just offers no real-estate for it. On the PC screen one can cover even three-fourths of the screen and still have enough space left to showcase the item to be sold.
One could argue that while it is okay to reduce or even stop the investments on PC-web, it could be foolish or even dangerous to discount it as a past that has completely ceased to exist. I believe the comfortable-with-PC shoppers will take a bit of time to change and may not like the fact that their favourite website isn’t asking for their opinion or offering a bridge to the future. What will happen, in my opinion, is that affiliate websites will have a party once they are the only route to the inventory on the PC-web. And we all know that’s 5-10% more expensive a sale.
Is it wise to put all your eggs in either basket is the question. Is it wise to forego an established paradigm and exit the field in favour of competition while taking a bet on the (almost) entirely unknown is the question. What do you feel?
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