Choosing a Website over a Mobile App

Today is May 24, 2015. Around 9 days ago, the popular apparel portal Myntra.com shut down its website to focus solely on its mobile app.

There were quite a few voices supporting it. Reasons :

• 80%+ of its total sales were from the mobile app  
• Companies like Reliance are setting up the foundation to increase the coverage of broadband. More people likely to access the internet via a small handy device called the smartphone
• Smartphone prices continue to dive as more Chinese companies enter the picture. 
• Myntra (ie its owner Flipkart) could now streamline its engineering efforts onto the mobile app rather than spend time on the cumbersome website (which has to be responsive, support all the main browsers & different versions, maintain a healthy SEO rating etc)

To push more consumers to its app, Flipkart has started a trend of 'app only' discounts.

I don't like this move a bit.  My reasons :

• The app can never show as many filtering options as much as the website due to the lesser screen area. I love tweaking the search criteria filters to get a better list of items rather than the default view.
• I can't use options like compare (which exist on the website itself) or use 3rd party browser extensions to compare (eg : BuyHatke)
• I have to install an app on my mobile which already has a nifty set of tools on it. I can't just start use an existing app on my mobile - my trusty old browser. 
• It is against the open nature of the internet. Search engines can't index the data & its available only on the company app. We should all read Tim Berner Lee's 'long live the web' article to understand better.   
• Newbies on the internet will 'google' it. You can't expect them to keep installing apps
• There is ALWAYS a sale in progress. How can you convince people to install app just to take advantage of an 'app only' offer where there are so many offers in progress all over the internet ?
• Final point dedicated to the environmentalists -  we shouldn't spend too much on our mobile due to the radiation they emit. We are going the opposite way here ! (ps: I love my HTC One but I do spent too much time on it :-/ )

Amazon has been in the business for a longer time than Flipkart but we haven't seen them take such a move. I think they understand the power of the free flow of the internet better than most others.

Hope this line of thought prevails over the other players too.