“Why do you need an app for something?” Well, an average user spends over 5 hours every day using their favorite apps. Google processes more than 8.5 million searches each day. Also, over 63% of organic US traffic comes from mobile devices. It clearly implies that an average user turns to the web (specifically their phone) for finding solutions to everyday problems. It sounds ironic, but even for seeking fitness advice, they turn towards the smartphone that actually made them unfit. So, if you’ve been thinking of investing in fitness app development, there are healthy chances of its success.
In this blog, let us tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about building and launching a fitness app that meets the modern-day expectations of a user.
Even industry behemoths like Apple and Amazon are always putting new ideas into practice in order to stay on top of fitness trends and support their users’ efforts to lead fitter lives. Thus, not only should you invest in a feature-rich, engaging fitness app but also think of ways it would be better/different than the existing players in the industry. Fret not. Throughout this blog, we would answer some of the most important questions about fitness mobile app development (even the ones you did not ask). And in the end, you will be all set to execute your plans.
What’s the Hype About Making a Custom Fitness App?
The market statistics clearly state that the demand for fitness apps is real. Industry giants are also part of the competition, and people are actively looking for workouts, tips, and guidance for a fitness-oriented routine. Not only do you need to offer appropriate solutions to users’ problems but also seek ways to stay ahead in the competitive market. Well, the latter is the key to the former.
So, How to make a fitness app that leaves an impression on the target audience and gives you a competitive edge over industry mates?
People face a lot of challenges throughout their fitness journey. The key to a successful app is resolving these checkpoints using a tailor-made solution. Here’s a list of some common challenges that people face and how a customized app can help to overcome them:
- Lack of Time and Motivation
Most people are victims of busy lifestyles and lose their time managing personal responsibilities, household chores, and desk jobs. When they have to make time for exercise, they eventually end up quitting. But fitness apps can help them make time for themselves and develop healthy habits step by step.
- Stuck With Strenuous Exercising
People often assume that fitness only comes from heavy exercise. But even the small things matter. For example, bike riding or a walk around the block. Your app can present these opportunities to them and send notifications to remind them to maintain regularity.
- Inability to See Progress
Not being able to see any progress is often demotivating and a major reason why many people quit exercising. With a game-like functionality, your app can notify them about every milestone in their fitness journey and give them a chance to celebrate!
- Gym Affordability
While people can still gather time and motivation, not everyone has the budget to spare for the gym. Your app can offer accessibility to gym training at a nominal fee.
- A Gym Trainer
Again, a personal trainer may not be the most affordable option for all. However, your app can make an on-demand coach accessible via videos, calls, chats, etc. This could be an actual game changer for your application.
Types of Fitness Apps You Can Build
As a mobile app development company, we meet a lot of clients who want to create fitness apps. However, the majority of them are unsure of the type of application they want. Before you hire developers and hand over the project to them, you must be prepared with a clear requirement. Here are some popular fitness app ideas for you to consider:
1. Health and Fitness Tracker
These apps help users to get regular health updates and track their fitness goals like getting in shape, weight loss, etc. Users can track their heart rate, foot count, calories burnt, and more and also set reminders for workouts.
2. Workout Apps
For improving their shape or maintaining their fitness, many look up to apps that help with customized workout plans, reminders, and progress tracking. These apps are loaded with interesting features like workout programs, running, walking, swimming trackers, etc. If you wish to serve a broader user base, you can set the features accordingly.
3. Diet and Nutrition Apps
A fitness routine is incomplete without a proper diet. Your app can guide beginners and others with a suitable diet and nutrition plan according to their fitness goals. There can be personalized diet plans and consultations to help people adopt better healthier food choices.
4. Yoga and Meditation Apps
People are looking forward to more ways to relax and de-stress. While yoga and meditation can offer this from the comfort of home, your app can guide users with the best practices for better mental and physical health.
5. Sleep Tracker
Sleep has a profound effect on the overall health and fitness of an individual. A sleep-tracking app can help users understand their sleep patterns and help with ways to improve their sleep cycle and the quality of sleep every day.
Moreover, when it comes to categorization, there can be plenty of fitness apps and their types. This little glimpse shall give you an idea of the app you want to build.
Features Can Be Game Changers
While all competitors are working with a similar concept that revolves around fitness, your app’s features can help users solve some of their crucial problems differently. In the end, it’s all about the ease and experience that your fitness app offers. Believe us when we say, do not rush this process. Make sure your app has all the features (basic ones especially) to solve users’ problems in real time.
What is the core features a fitness app should have?
Here’s a list of key features that will make your fitness app a complete solution.
1. User Profile Creation
Offering personalized services always requires you to collect some necessary details from the users. The profile creation feature allows users to share their basic details like name, age, gender, height, weight, and exceptional medical conditions so that your app can generate a suitable customized workout/diet plan for them.
2. Fitness Tracking
This is one of the most crucial features your app should have. The ability to track their workouts and the progress they’ve made so far keep users motivated throughout their fitness journey. Also, it helps the app’s algorithm with some essential data to give the best fitness advice.
3. Goal Setting
Goals help users to take little steps towards healthier habits and get used to a fitness routine. This feature allows them to set short-term and long-term fitness goals and track their progress along the way.
4. Workout Programs
Your app should be able to provide users with workout programs that are tailored to their fitness levels. Make sure that these workouts are easy to follow and designed in a way to meet their requirements.
5. Setting Reminders
There’s always a group of people that need extra motivation for exercising. Reminders can be a great way to keep users motivated and remind them about their workouts and fitness goals.
6. Nutrition Tracking
As said earlier, exercises without a proper diet may be a waste of time and effort. Implementing the nutrition tracking feature in your fitness app will ensure that users make better food choices and fuel the results from their workouts.
7. Social Sharing
Social sharing features allow users to share their workouts and progress with their friends. This is highly motivating for the users and improves engagement on your app.
8. Customer Support
Customer support is necessary to help users who may have queries or might be stuck with a functionality. It’s important to be readily available to make sure users aren’t frustrated and leave your app with negative feedback.
Apart from these core features, there are some more features you can implement in your app to offer even better experiences:
- Compatibility with wearables
- GPS tracking for outdoor workouts
- Heart rate monitoring and calorie counting
- Rewards or Badges
- Forums and message boards
- Meal plans, recipes, and blogs
Additionally, there are some modern aspects of fitness app development that you must pay attention to. Utilizing these advancements within your app can yield great results for you and the users. One such element is AI (Artificial Intelligence).
Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Fitness Apps
Artificial intelligence has transformed many industries over the past few years. While you strive to offer something unique and worthwhile to the users, AI can help you make a notable difference and leave a good impression. Using AI in fitness apps is a benefit in a lot of ways:
- Highly personalized user experience with the help of real-time data
- Accurate recommendations which lead to better user satisfaction
- Leverage the data to support marketing and expansion
- Smooth management of the online and offline fitness guidance
AI makes it possible to pursue the client-centric approach with the help of the extensive data it collects. Thus, with the help of the right algorithms and smart use of information, you can reach out to the target audience and offer them an exclusive, personalized experience.
Understanding Fitness App Development Process
Do you think it’s a lot of information to grab at once? Thank you for making it this far through the blog. But we don’t want you to miss out on important information and make mistakes that you regret later. So, the best advice we can give now is to read further.
We have seen a lot of clients jump to conclusions and start off with the development process without complete knowledge only to get stuck later. When you look for fitness app development services, understand the process to make the right decisions.
Developing a fitness app has a process similar to any other mobile app with a slight difference in the industrial concept. Moreover, many companies prefer developing an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to ensure that things are going on the right track.
Earlier in one of our previous blogs, we have already discussed the mobile app development process in detail. So, for now, we’ll just brief you about it along with some additional steps that would help you monetize and expand your app in the future.
Here are some of the key steps for building a fitness app:
Step 1: Analyze App Idea and Other Requirements
The fitness app market is widely spread. It’s necessary to conduct rigorous research and analyze your app idea before working on it. In this step, you will have to categorize your app within the industry and decide what it will do for the users. Along with your app’s goal, you need to decide on which platforms it should be compatible with. You will be required to hire developers accordingly.
Step 2: Finalize the Features of Your Fitness App
We already discussed some of the core features of the fitness app in the above section, and you must have an idea about what needs to be done now. Filter your thoughts and finalize all the features that are essential to make your app complete. An app’s features can be generally divided into three categories:
- The must-haves from fitness point-of-view
- Features as per the specifications of the app
- The ones that give a competitive edge
Based on this categorization, make sure you choose the best ones to be implemented in your app.
Step 3: Choose a Monetization Method
You could be developing a fitness app to support your existing brand or gym chain. There are a lot of ways you can expect and yield revenue from it. Some of them include:
- In-App Purchases
While you could be selling fitness equipment directly through the app, a customized fitness app can offer more options for in-app purchases like special workouts, additional functionalities, celebrity tutorials, and more.
- Freemium Model
It’s based on the ‘try before you buy’ concept. This model allows users to enjoy the premium features of an app for free within a limited time duration. Later if the users want to continue accessing those premium features they can purchase a plan.
- Ads-Based Model
In-app advertising is another reliable way of monetizing your app. However, make sure the ads are relevant to your users and do not start irritating them.
- Partnerships and Sponsors
With an impeccable fitness app, you can seek opportunities to collaborate with celebrities, gym businesses, and sports brands. It would really be a winning card for your venture and bring great results.
Step 4: UX and UI Design For the App
This step is all about the look and feel of your app. Make sure the designers conduct market analysis and share the best designs for your fitness app. Since it’s responsible to keep the users engaged, a design should be simple yet attractive and easy to navigate.
Step 5: Mobile App Development (Coding)
With the help of a reliable mobile app development company, now it’s time to work on the actual development of your fitness app. In a few discussions with the team, you will have to decide on the technologies that will be used. Further, the developers with respective skillset can start coding for the app.
You don’t want your users to experience inconvenience because of a slow-loading app that has bugs and glitches. Therefore, make sure the development company offers quality analysis as well. Every app requires sufficient testing before it’s launched.
Step 6: App Launch and Performance Analysis
Once the app is fully developed and tested for bugs and errors, it’ll be ready for launch. This is a crucial time as you need to analyze whether the app’s performance is up to the mark. Make sure to get feedback from the users and make suitable updates to the application. Remember to discuss these things with your development partner in advance.
Step 7: Integrating Your App With Wearable Devices
To make sure that your target audience can easily access your fitness app, it’s important to integrate it with wearable devices. It’s one of the best ways to keep the users engaged with your app.
29.9% of people use smart wearables
Thus, if you focus on user engagement and accessibility of the app, integration with wearables is likely to play a major role. The growing wearables market size is an indicator that this is something you must not skip.
To understand the development process in more detail, Read Our Blog.
In this discussion, we still did not discuss anything about the cost of app development. While it’s an important aspect and clients seek an accurate answer to this, the overall cost to develop a fitness app or any other application can only be roughly estimated. There are a lot of factors that would affect the expenses you need to incur. For example, the technologies used, time is taken for development, post-development updates, etc. To know the exact cost, it’s important to have a thorough discussion of the project details with your development partner.
Fitness App Development With Narola Infotech
Narola Infotech is a growing team of 350+ IT experts including developers, designers, and quality analysts who come together to provide you with reliable tech solutions. Over the 17+ years, we spent thriving in this industry, we have served more than 1500 clients across 50+ countries with 100% client satisfaction.
While you are seeking fitness app developers to rely on, we can be the ones you trust. Discuss your project with us, and we will provide you with the best solution according to your requirements and development budget. Feel free to reach out for any queries or services.