Retail is one of the domains which is trying to adapt to mobile technology in a big way. Every big retailer is trying to put their best foot forward envisaging their customers’ pattern of spending as well as their lifestyle.

First, let us try looking why mobile at the first go?

The answer is pretty obvious. It is because of the “omnichannel strategy” which the retailers are now trying to adapt religiously. The brick and mortar stores are also moving to the web as well mobile, as they want to have their footprints across the available channels.

And, with the number of Smartphone users increasing in India with a CAGR of 26%, this move seems to be in the right direction.

But when Myntra announced the “App only strategy”, people thought that in today’s world where the customer needs more and more personalized attention and people want the saying to be true that “Customer is the king”, others will follow the bandwagon effect. But, to everyone’s surprise nobody followed the line till now.

The reason being that though it provides the Indian e-commerce giants the ability to analyze their customers in a better way and track their behavioral pattern, the data utilization and RAM of average Indian Smartphone serves as a roadblock. An average Indian Smartphone user buys a phone of Rs 7k -8k which has a limited RAM capacity ,generally close to 1GB .To keep the phone running decently, Indian customer moves to “Use and delete “ strategy after a while. This means only those apps remains in the phone which the customers finds useful at that point of time, others being deleted soon after its use.

So, what is required?

The mobile web browsers need to empower these e-commerce companies, and act as enablers to provide the users the same UI and feel as the app, facilitating the following.

  • Push notification
  • Easy tracking customers on web
  • Enhanced user experience
  • Provide voice search
  • One touch checkout

The e-commerce will move to mobile browsers as and when the likes of Google, Mozilla, IE and other mobile web browsers can provide the above features in a better way.