Having closed it's website for close to a year and moving to become app only shopping company, Flipkart owned Myntra had to take a step back and plans to relaunch it's desktop website on 1st June. This tells a lot about the power of desktop over mobile. The company is surely missing it's desktop customers since the close of website. While everything is going mobile, there are indeed some things which only work better on desktops than their small screen twin.
Why mobile can't beat desktop for eCommerce
There are a few reasons I think, as to why mobile can't beat desktop for eCommerce
Large Screen: Bigger the better
This one is easier. Obviously when your customers are viewing products, they would like to see them clear with big images. While mobile apps can show all the images, they have to be optimized for mobile and so they can't be as crispy and clear as their desktop counterparts. Also, on a large screen customers will be able to see more things at once.
Frequent Updates
Every-time you find a bug or introduce a new feature in your store, you'll have to release a new update. A website just needs an update on your hosting service account and every next request to your website will start using the new version of website. The same is not the case with mobile apps. Users will have to manually update their apps as per their choice. They may not want to update your app at all. You'll then have to provide support for previous versions of your mobile apps along with the latest version till your customers transit to new version of your app.
Better Shopping Experience
While mobile shopping is good, users often find shopping experience easy on desktop than mobile. You get to see product reviews, product details, images etc. in far more better way on your desktop than on your mobile. You can better compare the same product over multiple websites on desktop. The same, if not impossible, is indeed very difficult in case of mobile app.
Easy Administration
No matter how much mobility is introduced in the world, the administration will no-doubt be easier with desktops only. Be it catalog entry, invoice customization, shipping and dispatching, maintenance of inventory, creation of product or other pages etc., you can be sure that using desktop for these tasks is going to be much more productive. Mobile will be useful if you are on the move, but in the office, desktop is the king.
Shareable Urls
So your customer likes a product and wants to take an opinion from her friend if she should buy this dress or not. With mobile app, she doesn't have any shareable url that she can ask her friend to go and see on mobile app. But with desktop, she has that liberty. Don't you think she will prefer desktop? In a social world, everything is opinionated whether you like it on not. And so shareable things outweighs the ones which can't be shared. There may be more things that may add more +1s to desktop. Let me know in the comments if you find some.
