Flipkart Partners With Google to Launch App Like Mobile Website

Flipkart Website open in Chrome Browser (Mobile)

E-commerce giant Flipkart launched an app-like mobile Web browser experience on Monday called Flipkart Lite, optimised for low-bandwidth connections and offering app-like features like push notifications and home screen access.

The mobile browser experience, which went live on Monday, works exclusively on Google Chrome - and is a return to the mobile Web for the company after it was shut in April as the first step in the company's app-only model.

"Websites push users to install the app. But only 4% of the people actually install the app. Flipkart doesn't have a mobile website. So we wanted to give the experience of a native application on a mobile website," said Peeyush Ranjan, head of engineering at Flipkart.

Flipkart Lite does not require any dedicated disk storage space and customers can experience one-touch home screen icon installation (instead of using the browser icon, you can simply use the Flipkart icon).

Flipkart partnered with Google to build the mobile website, optimising it to make use of Google Chrome's newly supported notifications feature, alongside home screen access. Re/code reports Flipkart had access to three new tools from Google's Chrome team, including Service Workers, meant to aid development for poor Internet connections .

The report quotes Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, a Chrome product manager, to say Flipkart is the first to take advantage of all the new tools, adding Google hopes other websites will follow suit.

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