The Essential Guide to Successful Functional Fitness App Development
Functional fitness apps occupy firm position among top fitness trends in year 2020. Why so? Healthy lifestyle has long become a trend, which is about to expand and strengthen its position in the nearest future. More and more people choose wellness, thus turning to fitness industry. Mobile market supports the general trend on healthy living offering diverse solutions suiting any situation. Thus, fitness software development opens bright perspectives inside healthcare industry.
We have already discovered best workout apps to come up with your product idea. In this post, OpenGeeksLab will dwell on development process of functional fitness app, highlight points of interest concerning modern fitness activity tracker app, and single out its must-have features. You will also read about fitness social network app we created to combine all-in-one fitness experiences.
Key Issues to Consider While Functional Fitness App Development
Fitness-oriented mobile software market attracts more clients every year: if in 2018 total user number reached 750 million, in 2019 this amount grew up to 822 million people engaged.
Actually, there exist two opposite directions inside fitness mobile development sphere: specification and unification. First one tackles small mobile market segments, paying attention to details and loyalty. Here belong mobile yoga classes (Daily Yoga), fitness apps for kids (Sworkit Kids), cardio fitness app (Daily Cardio Workout), outdoor fitness app (Runtastic), etc. Unification means uniting diverse application types into all-in-one project to satisfy clients’ needs in various functionality.
Another fitness trend for 2020 is wearables integration. Small handy devices grow in popularity expanding the market. Wearable software has brought about 6 times more revenue in past few years, thus making bets on it represent far-reaching promising investments.
Other famous examples of must have fitness apps include Nike Training Club, MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, 7 Minute Workout.
Fundamental Fitness App Features
Usually, health & workout applications have limited functionality. Users need to download more stuff to meet their specific needs — activity tracking, workout, nutrition apps. Functional fitness app works as a lifesaver if developers aim to create a holistic mobile product serving clients everything at his or her fingertips. Basic functional scope while adaptive fitness app development includes:
1. Profile & Personalization
Profile info and customization opportunities stand among must-have features for functional fitness app development. Personal data as well as user preferences or personalized settings improve user experience and increase services efficiency.
2. Push Notifications & Reminders
Push notifications are of vital importance in app for fitness competition development, as with reminders customers are sure not to miss exercise session or meal anytime.
3. Goal Setting
Motivation is a strong factor to build healthy lifestyle, thus creating landmarks becomes useful for people in defining their way toward desired results.
4. Healthy Eating & Calorie Control
Correct nutrition plan is of no less importance while cool fitness apps development. Healthy eating feature comprises calorie tracker/calculator, eating program, suggested recipes, food checker, etc.
5. Workout Plan
Created by professional fitness coaches exercise programs offer diverse options ranging between different difficulty levels or aiming at various activities. Workout program usually depends on user objectives and his or her current progress.
6. Journal Record
While following any workout program it is important to know where are you on your way towards dream, so journal record helps tracking results thoroughly turning into fitness diary app created by useful stats or pics.
7. Wearables Support
Wearables support is essential for Android or iOS fitness tracker apps, as it increases engagement level. With fitness tracking apps for Apple Watch customers are more likely to see notifications in time or quickly interact with the application in inconvenient situations.
8. Payment Gateway & In-App Purchases
Payment solutions increase functional fitness app profit as far as clients can easily order premium services, make in-built purchases, subscribe, etc.
Main Monetization Strategies to Make Your Mobile Fitness Project Successful
To convert a simple fitness tracker app into a successful commercial project, business owner should take care of applying appropriate monetization strategy. Basic models that have proved efficiency on modern market comprise paid apps, in-app purchases, freemium, subscription, ads, and sponsored content.
1. Paid Apps
Paid application model is the simplest one — user should pay before using your product. The price is set judging upon functional fitness app’s type, feature set, mobile platforms supported, content offered, etc. The greatest advantage attracting customers is that product becomes completely free-to-use for unlimited time-period after buying it.
2. In-App Purchases
In-built purchases represent another popular monetization strategy. It becomes useful in cases business owner want to attract clients by free version, getting profit vicariously. In terms of mobile on demand fitness app in-app purchases may vary from ordering substantial professionally designed healthy life programs to buying small items like equipment or meal recipes.
3. Freemium
Freemium type is good while covering diverse audience segments as it offers solutions both for modest and sophisticated fitness enthusiasts. Free downloadable application usually possesses basic functional scope suitable for beginners. Advanced features (e.g. personal coach, highly personalized workouts/nutrition, etc.) become available only after buying premium account.
4. Subscription
Subscription model is close to first one, though there is slight difference between them. Unlike fitness apps without subscription, this strategy implies annual payments. The nominal price is split into several parts so customers who cannot afford paying whole sum at once choose subscription as convenient substitute.
5. Advertisements
Ads appear among most popular monetization types, as it allows attracting clients and cooperating with other agencies simultaneously. Business runner can present functional fitness app as completely free one placing partner-company’s advertisement within the project and receiving money for clicks/conversions/etc.
6. Sponsored Content
Sponsored content strategy is close to ads, though it is more partnership oriented. Business runners make contracts with certain gyms or coaches who distribute unique content among users. This model helps not only in partnership building, but also in creating new provided activities.
There is no universal solution while considering monetization, as all the models listed above have own benefits and drawbacks. It depends on business runner which strategy to choose for getting maximum profit out of own functional fitness app development.
Our Experience in Development Fitness Social Network App
How Was Solid Fit Started?
Three separate app types usually represent mobile fitness market: workout or exercise programs, activity tracking, dieting and nutrition plan building. As far as each category has a strictly specified aim and target audience, the functional scope is usually limited and cannot meet all user expectations.
Our client intended to cover several market segments by enlarging available features and expanding target audience. Therefore, he came up with the idea of uniting three basic fitness application categories into a single custom fitness app. Solid Fit had to function as fitness social network providing users with activity tracking, exercise programs and nutrition plans created by professional nutritionists, dieticians, and coaches.
Challenges to Overcome
Our main objective lied in development completely new fitness-oriented ecosystem that would satisfy customers’ needs and provide efficient functionality. Apart from profound personal data storage with info available in few taps, our developers aimed at ensuring such features as personal online specialist, planner, progress tracking services, reports, etc. Besides application had to be easily customized and have intuitive user-friendly interface design.
Applied Solutions
1. High-Level Customization
As our application combines several objectives, it has user-friendly design and managing system. Client defines priorities basing on which individual eating or workout plans are created. Besides, all the data is stored within the app, so customer can always have it at hand and change the settings up to liking.
2. Easy Communication
Within our fitness social network app users can easily communicate with one another or subscribe to preferred gyms or coaches/nutritionists. Client-specialist direct intercourse improves fitness plan’s efficiency due to individual approach. In case customer does not want to contact experts directly, he or she has plenty of ready-made solutions to suit their needs.
3. Goals Tracking
Being weight and fitness tracker app at the same time, our application helps in creating daily/monthly sports loads (repetitions, sets, frequency, etc.) and calculating meals/calories to track progress while reaching goals set before.
4. Photo Reports
There is nothing more illustrative than photos if you want watch your progress, so our developers have implemented it into functional scope. Users can make/download pictures to observe and compare their results visually.
5. Progress Statistics
As well as photos statistics always creates positive impact onto motivation, as it visualizes progress and makes tracking process easy and pleasant. Stats and photos can go together highlighting current results.
6. Daily Activities Tracking
The app also helps in controlling everyday activities, such as eating, drinking, sleeping. It becomes real fitness diary app, taking care of user’s water intake, calorie intake or burning, building healthy sleeping schedule based on objectives set.
7. Smart Eating
As our project serves as fitness and calorie tracker app, it is responsible for building individual healthy meals. As other dieting-/nutrition-oriented programs, it has a profound base of foods and ingredients accompanied by visuals. The meals recommendation engine selects the most suitable ingredients and provides recipes for user to cook. As other features, it can be customized via adding own dishes and/or ingredients which will be included into final menu calculations and stored together with original meals set.
8. In-Built Payments
Payment gateway integration is useful while customers make a deal with preferred expert/organization and get desired services without hesitation or delay.
9. Recommendations
Recommendation engine suggests ready-made solutions to customer while meals/exercises plan creating, objectives adjusting, activity choosing. It usually sorts info chronologically so users can easily navigate within suggested options.
10. Reminders & Notifications
As other fitness monitoring apps, our project has elaborated reminders and notification system, that help customers staying involved and fulfill workout plan in time. Besides, our developers implemented motivation feature keeping user enthusiastic about next workout session or tasty meal to be prepared for lunch or supper.
11. Results Storage & Sharing
Customers can improve results using fitness app with videos, photos, etc. They can create media reports or save efficient exercise sessions to illustrate their results. Shared media reports also contribute into profound fitness program development as coaches can observe training process/results and adjust activities to boost the progress.
Technologies & Development Team
Creating a brand-new fitness social network app required several technological solutions to be applied during development process. The basic set included Firebase, React, Redux, Rest API, Algolia. The stack implemented allowed creating fitness app compatible both with Android and iOS platforms.
To roll out the final product in time three team members were engaged into development process: two developers and one project manager to run the workflow.
Discover the Field by Yourself!
Understanding market and basic principles of functional fitness app development is the first step towards becoming a successful part in fitness sphere. Consider our experience and do not hesitate! Hit the niche with your unique fitness app idea, or contact us right now to create a project that will take off together.
