Myntra, an online fashion retailer owned by e-commerce giant Flipkart, has decided to get back onto its desktop version from June 1. The major step has been taken to increase the sales by 15-20 per cent in the current fi-nancial year from its desktop website and bring back the customers lost by switching to the app-only sales strategy.
The announcement has been made nearly a year after Myntra shut its desktop and mobile website to become world's first app based store. Dur-ing the experimental year, the company not only observed a sudden down-fall in the sales but also got its move criticised by economists and investors across the world.
While agreeing to the fact there are still people who shop only on PC, Myn-tra chief executive Ananth Narayanan said, "Though a majority of the growth is driven by mobile, the volume of users on desktop hasn't de-creased. Realising our customers needs and from the feedback received, we are re-launching the website."
"This will help us bring back customers, minimise company's losses and provide a larger screen where customers can see our newly launched fur-nishing and jewellery categories," he added.
According to December 2015 data by analytics firm SimilarWeb, Flipkart topped the list with 47 per cent share of visits among the major shopping apps, dominating the entire mobile commerce in the country. Largest fash-ion e-tailer Myntra occupied the second position with over 16 per cent share of visits followed by Amazon at 15.86% and Snapdeal with 13.84%.
Flipkart was also leading in total app installation with an install base of 37% of Android smartphones. Combined with Myntra, the total install base went up to 47% in India. Amazon and Snapdeal are still trying to reach half of Flipkart's install base at 18% each.
Myntra's transition was followed by the company's belief that 70 per cent of its sales were drawn from its mobile app. However, the fashion store recorded its actual revenue of Rs.758 crore while its annualised gross sales were $350-400 million when it was also a website. According to the documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), the Bengaluru-based firm suffered as loss of Rs.1,126.60 crore. Mantra executives have also mentioned that, the company had missed its target of achieving $1billion annual GMV in FY15, and has now laid down strategies to achieve its profitable goal by March 2017.
It is being said that, in a highly competitive market where other e-commerce portals like Amazon and Snapdeal have grabbed the attention of a lager whole, scrapping the plan laid last year by Myntra and reopening its website will contribute a big success-rate to its 2017 goal. With the in-creased sales of higher-priced products and charged deliveries, the com-pany has also cut discounts and supply chain costs to makeover its loss-es.
Desktop version may not entertain the users 'anytime and everytime' as the app did, but while being a pure e-commerce site, the company will not alienate even a small number of users. An additional profit, which adds brownie-points to the total revenue, will also be yielded.
