Flipkart-owned fashion retailer Myntra has silently relaunched portions of its mobile website after shutting it down earlier this year focus on app-only model in March 2015. Products listed across categories like shirts and hoodies are accessible on the mobile website, but purchases must still be made using the app. Myntra's mobile website homepage doesn't have links to browseable pages on the home page. The desktop version of the website offers no product listings yet, instead it leads to a link to download the app. Flipkart launched the Lite version of its app in collaboration with Google in November, which provides app-like features on Chromium-based web browsers. Myntra shutting down its mobile website had seeded the “apps versus web” debate earlier this year. While the data might have pointed towards a 100% shift in the future, strategically, it was a poor decision: All eggs in one basket is a bet you can take as an upstart, not as an incumbent, and the business should not have closed out all other modes of reaching customers. It's unclear at this point if Myntra planning to launch a 'Lite' experience, like Flipkart which was built on the Chromium engine, or if will it run on a separate technology stack, with support for browsers like UC Browser. The company declined to comment on our queries sent to spokespersons on Monday. Snapdeal soon after Flipkart's Lite announcement also unveiled a new mobile website - Snap-Lite - that had been specially optimised for slower-Internet connections, rather than providing app-like features that Flipkart has. One of the reasons for Myntra's return to the mobile web could be Google's new app install interstitial penalty, which downrates search results for websites that display full-page interstitial before the content. Google insists that webmasters user-friendly formats such as app install banners, which Myntra's current website is more in line with. Myntra had shuttered the desktop version of its website in May, making it necessary for customers to download the app in order to facilitate purchases. Distribution (whether via telecom operators, social networks or browsers) is the lifeblood of web businesses, and has the propensity to dictate terms when it becomes too powerful. The only way to address this is to ensure that you, as a content or service business, don’t give a competitive advantage to any particular platform. The browser wars ended many years ago, and the definition of web standards helped ensure that websites don’t determine which browsers people can use, and browsers don’t determine which websites users can visit. It needs to remain that way. - See more at: http://www.khanstory.com/2015/12/myntra-comes-again-with-mobile-website.html#sthash.kIKDr4mP.dpuf
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