Following the pattern of Flipkart, Snapdeal too launched a ‘Lite’ version for the smartphones just like Flipkart Lite. The announcement came a few days after the launch of the Flipkart Lite version for smartphones. According to Anand Chandrasekaran, Snapdeal’s chief product officer :” Is there a Snapdeal.com experience that’s 85% faster? Introducing Snap-Lite (across all mobile browsers).”
Is there a https://t.co/Ed8cS7dJ8g experience that’s 85% faster? Introducing Snap-lite (across all mobile browsers). pic.twitter.com/dWtZkFniWw
— Anand Chandrasekaran (@anandc) November 12, 2015
These ‘Lite’ war came just after a short-term App war for which company literally pushed and compelled customers to buy ‘only’ from App if they were to get any good offer. The indication, if seen ahead of these ‘Lite’ site launches, is clear that targeting App is not sufficient, its smartphone they have to target.
The ecommerce companies know that they heavily draw a large amount of the traffic and sale (sometimes most of it) through smartphones and the lighter versions of their sites with app-like features will give an ultimate boost to the acceptance and the compulsion of the app-download would be replaced by the option of bookmarking.
However, Snapdeal’s Lite version is not that much compatible with the app-like features as Flipkart Lite is. It seems that it lacks an ability to add a shortcut on the home screen, push notifications, and offline functionality.
According to Chandrasekaran “We want to be present across all platforms. It is our customer’s choice to shop from whichever platform they are comfortable in,”. This is not the first time Snapdeal is favouring the ‘option-based’ shopping experience for shoppers, earlier, Mr. Kunal (CEO of Snapdeal) said that it would not be a good idea to go app-only and it have only helped Snapdeal to go better with the decisions of the rival site of going App-only.
