From the 28th of May through the first of June, Konga.com is hosting a mega sale that promises mega discounts. But with a twist. The online store will be shutting down its desktop website for five days, and will only sell via its mobile app throughout that duration. This is clearly not just the latest marketing push. It’s also an elaborate experiment with which Konga seems to be taking the concept of mobile-first to the logical extreme. Mobile-only.
This is not the first time someone’s tried it. Flipkart has run a similar experiment in April, and promises to go mobile-only by 2016, via just its apps.
Konga will be discounting sales during the period up to 75 percent. E-commerce websites have been known to experience downtime from the excessive load of customers trying to cash in on the bargains at the same time. Will the servers hold? Won’t the strain on just the mobile app interface be too much to handle?
Even if the experiment goes off without a hitch, it is unlikely that Konga.com will be permanently restricting buying access to just its app anytime soon. Even app-crazed Flipkart is hedging their bets. And unlike India where smartphone adoption is borderline insane, a great deal of internet traffic in Nigeria happens via PCs, and during office hours, suggesting that personal, smartphone and mobile internet adoption are still yet to get “there”.
The one outcome that however seems assured by means of this drive is that more people will download Konga’s shopping app.
