Last
week saw, announcements of major policy changes by two corporates in
the field of e-commerce, that are likely to have a far reaching
influence on future, because they are likely to be followed by others
soon. But before we get to that, let us see some statistics. The
internet, which was first introduced to US consumers sometime in late
eighty’s or early ninety’s, essentially grew on back of strong
growth in sales of personal computers and then laptops. Compared to
US, sales of PC's and laptops in India not only remained smaller but
now is actually declining. It is very clear, that sales of personal
computers and laptops do not drive up growth of internet in India.
Let us now have a look at the growth figures of internet users in
India. According to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
and IMRB International, “The Internet in India took more than a
decade to move from 10 million to 100 million and 3 years from 100
million to 200 million. However, it took only a year to move from 200
to 300 million users.” Today there are more than 340-350 million
internet users in India. It also means that India has the second
largest Internet user base in the world at present. China leads with
more than 600 million Internet users.
But
how do people access internet in India? The number of smartphone
users has been growing at a rate of 54 per cent during 2014, reaching
a figure of 140 millions. By this year end, 204 million Indians would
be using smartphones and by 2019, this number is likely to grow to
651 million smartphones along with 18.7 million tablets. I think that
the numbers indicate very clearly that internet is growing in India
only on back of smartphones and tablets and within next 4 to 5
years, the number of PC or laptop users are likely to lag much behind
the users using smartphone to access internet.
The
decisions by these two corporates should be seen under light of these
facts. The first announcement came from Flipkart; a Bengaluru based
e-commerce company founded in 2007 with a gross revenue of Rs.28.46
Billion in 2014. The company announced that they would move to an
mobile app-only format within a year. The company has more than 40
million registered users and has about 30,000 merchants selling over
20 million products on the platform. They do, 8 million shipments a
month, and two-thirds of it's online traffic, comes from users in
small cities and towns. It justifies this decision on facts that
today, 60 % of it's business is coming from mobile platform as
against 6%, that came about 18 months ago. The company says that
this shows the significance of what a mobile phone is doing for the
consumers and consequently for them.
The
second important decision comes from Google and is of more interest
or concern to everyone, who own web sites, portals, blogs etc and
generate content to put on them. Naturally 'Akshardhool' is also one
of them. According to this announcement from Google, which says;
“ Starting
April 21, Google Search will be expanding its use of
mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect
mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a
significant impact in Google Search results. Users will find it
easier to get relevant, high quality search results optimized for
their devices.”
What
would the impact of this new ranking method? For any internet user
(mobile or PC), trying to search internet with a Google search
engine, the web sites that would top the search list would be only
those that are mobile friendly. Since majority of net users are likely to
be using mobile platforms, a web site therefore has very little
chance of being seen by the searcher unless it is mobile friendly.
Google has also stipulated a Mobile-Friendly Test tool and suggests
that web sites take that test and confirm that they are ready to be
mobile friendly. Otherwise, they face real risk of being neglected by
search engine spiders. Luckily, 'Akshardhool' web site is mobile
friendly and as blog writer, I have no worries about my web site.
Google
advises further:
“Even
if you already have a mobile-optimized site, it’s worth taking some
time to double-check your site’s pages using the Mobile-Friendly
Test tool. Also, check out the AdSense Multiscreen Implementation
Guide, which covers AdSense implementation best practices to improve
monetization on Mobile, which is critical to your business and will
continue to be so. Make sure visitors can have a good experience on
your site when they’re visiting from their mobile devices.”
For
those readers, who may not be aware, Adsense is the service through
which Google adds advertisements on web sites. In other words, if a
web site is not mobile friendly, it is likely to see much less
advertisement content and would affect it's revenue generation.
So
where does this all lead? I can clearly see other e-merchants quickly
following Flipkart and similarly other search engines taking over
their mobile friendly avatars. We are moving over to mobile
dominated internet and all web sites and content providers, need to
change and adopt to new realities. Unless they do that, their chances
of survival appear rather remote.
23rd
April 2015
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