Development Guide: How to Build a Fitness App

We are currently witnessing a trend (if we may call it that) for a healthy lifestyle. Endless photos from the gym on Instagram feed, the popularity of yoga and meditation, gluten-free recipes — everything tells us that wellness is a new luxury.

The technology not only follows the trends, but sometimes creates them — wearable trackers such as Apple Watch stimulated a huge number of people to become more conscious about the level of their physical activity. Smartphones, as an essential part of our lives, also offers the users a variety of options to make their lifestyle more sporty. One of them is workout apps.

Health and fitness apps have a remarkably high level of engagement — over 75% of users open them at least two times a week while 25% access their apps more than 10 times a week.

Do you have an idea to build a fitness app, or you own a gym and want to develop a custom system for your visitors? Recently our team has designed a Health Life — an app that provides users with workout guidance and allows to track training logs. We decided to share our experience in a comprehensive guide to help you create an outstanding product that:

1. Define the type of the app

Different types of fitness apps have different goals, features, and therefore target audience:

• Fitness-tracking apps

They collect data

about different parameters of a user’s physical activity — steps, heart rate, sleep quality. According to the research conducted by Researchscape International, 51% of Americans use wearable fitness trackers. Fitness-tracking apps allow to get more detailed information from wearable trackers and use it for further workouts.

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• Workout apps

Such apps are used by people who don’t have time or don’t want to go to the gym. The app substitutes a personal trainer providing workout guidance and specific sets of exercises. Depending on the app, users can choose the intensity, difficulty, duration, and trainer.

• Diet and nutrition apps

These apps help users to monitor their eating habits and make them healthier, track calories they consume, and control water balance. Some of such apps allow users to log food they have consumed by simply scanning a barcode and getting all the information about calories.

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2. Choose the features

Core and additional features of the fitness app directly affect the complexity of the development:

• Workout guides

The main rule in implementing this feature is the more the better. Fitness app should have a wide library of workout guidance for different levels of physical education. Provide users of your app with all-round assistance, from simple how-to guides to the workouts with high intensity. Divide guides into categories to make the search quick and easy.

• User activity tracking

Activity tracking allows to collect data about what a user has done during a day including a number of steps taken and calories burnt. It helps to see the outcomes of the workouts, set new goals and achieve them.

• Training schedule

A calendar to plan, organize, and log workout sessions helps to make sport schedule regular. Organized workout routine motivates users and makes the training more effective.

• Notifications

Reminding users about upcoming training is a simple yet great function. Notifications can also be used to send users useful workout tips, motivational quotes, or personalized health recommendations.

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• Contact with trainer

You can develop an app that will connect gym-goers and trainers to ensure effective collaboration. This feature increases your target audience twice.

• Social media integration

The tendency of sharing your life in social media becomes stronger — it’s enough to look at the statistics to understand that. Enable the users of your app to share their sports achievements and invite friends — that will help to promote your app and gather a community around it.

• Goal setting

One of the most motivational fitness app features — let users set their goals and feel the satisfaction of achieving them.

• Geolocation

This feature helps users to build walking and running routes, and track their current position.

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• Music app integration

Quite a lot of people prefer listening to music while running exercising or jogging. They have to bother with switching between workout and music apps while integration will make it simple and enjoyable.

3. Choose monetization strategy

Fitness app market is growing and there are more and more users interested in fitness apps. The potential audience is huge and there are few ways how to monetize an app:

• Freemium

Users down free version with basic functionality but can pay and upgrade to premium. The free package must be attractive enough not only to download an app, but also to pay for a premium version.

• In-app purchases

If you wonder how to monetize your app, consider this model that combines free and paid options. The app is basically free, but users can open additional features for purchase.

• Paid-app

This strategy must be considered if you already have an audience that will be willing to pay — in other cases it would be difficult to make people way for the unknown product.

• Advertising

The most popular monetization model with 65% of all apps using it. The app displays third-party ads and provides revenue from clicks and views. Such ads are sometimes irritating and can push users away — to avoid that, products and services advertised in your app must be health- and sport-related.

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4. Turn your idea into a real product

If you have an idea of the app and are looking for the development company, contact our team to get a free consultation. We will determine what features your app must have, and tell you how much time and resources are necessary to develop it.

Our team focuses on custom development, so we will build an app tailored to the needs of your potential users. You can see some of our works in our portfolio and know us a bit better. We are ready to help you and craft a market-changing product — don’t hesitate to contact us.

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