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Nothing is impossible to achieve, with the only exception of fitness.
Well, actually even fitness is easy to achieve, with enough determination and motivation. And of course, with the right fitness app.
Fitness apps have become almost as necessary for our daily workout schedule as a good pair of running shoes. And hence it is no surprise that a lot of startuprenuers are analyzing how to create a workout app!
If you are reading this, I can safely assume you are in that league and want to create your own fitness application for gymming and workout needs. Well, this article solely based on that – to guide you through the step by step process.
So lace up your running shoes people, cause we begin in 3, 2, 1…
Now, what are some reasons for this rising popularity of fitness apps? Let’s take a detailed look before you create your own fitness application.
Let’s face it, getting a personal trainer is not only hard, but it is also a costly procedure.
It is a trial and error thing. You never know if the instructor you hired would be the proper fit for you or not. Not to mention that getting a personal trainer is also extremely costly.
But with a fitness app installed on the phone can change the work out the style of a person. There is no need for a new trainer or instructor anymore. All someone needs to do is to get the right app for them and they are ready to start on their fitness journey.
None of us have the patience to wait until we get the perfect body.
Which is why most of us will begin with the most unrealistic goal to get the perfect body as soon as we can. But fitness doesn’t work that way.
This is why fitness apps are becoming so popular today. They are not only helping us get the perfect body, but they are helping us to set the helpful and realistic fitness goals we need.
The fitness apps take our information regarding health and curate fitness goals suitable for our health and body statistics. These personalized fitness goals help up to get more fit, at the right time.
Fitness apps help us to monitor and track our workout routine. This way we can know where exactly we are in our fitness calendar. It is the easiest and best possible way to track our progress.
Fitness apps will ask for information such as what we had for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and calculate our calorie intake. And then they would monitor our activity level such as how much we exercised during the day, or how many steps we walked and tell us how many calories we burned during the activity and how to make we need to burn. This is one of the biggest reasons why fitness apps have become so popular.
The same workout routine every day is bound to get boring and as a result, you can get demotivated as well. Which is why fitness apps are all in vogue now.
The best fitness apps out there will give you a new idea for your work out regime every day, switching things up so that you don’t feel bored while going through your work out session.
Working out is the only way of getting the perfect body, you have to eat right for it as well.
Which is why most fitness apps also have a diet section, where they suggest new and healthy eating habits which will help us with our fitness goals. These healthy eating tips not only help us in getting in perfect shape but improves our lifestyle as well.
Working out alone can be a lonely thing.
Fitness apps with their social integration help the users to find more people who have the same fitness goals as well. They can share their success stories and keep motivating each other to live a better healthier lifestyle.
So there you have it. All the reasons why fitness apps have become so popular among the crowd today. Now let’s see how to make fitness app.
So you have an idea and want to build a fitness app. Only you are dreading how complicated it would be to develop a fitness application.
To build your own fitness app, you have to start with a thorough market analysis and see what other fitness apps are doing.
Market research is going to help you in two ways to make your own fitness app.
Now, for the market of fitness apps, it is growing every day. The daily stress of modern lifestyle has made it hard for people to lead a proper healthy life. So in order to lead a healthy lifestyle, they are heavily depending on fitness and well-being apps. These apps are not only helping them to get in shape but to help them sleep, even achieve peace of mind through meditation as well.
Now, let’s put this notion into numbers. According to the study conducted by Polaris Market Research, the global fitness app market size was valued somewhere around $2.10 billion in 2017. The CAGR is anticipated to grow more than 24.3% within 2026.
As mentioned before, the increasing stress of everyday life, along with obesity, and an increasing number of health issues are the reason for this rapid growth of the fitness app market. People today are becoming more aware of calories consumed, proper nutrition and weight loss. The more aware they are becoming of their health issues, the more fitness apps rise in popularity.
Firstly, it is going to give you an in-depth look at what the market is like for fitness apps. This overview is going to help you to understand what people are demanding in a fitness app. You will get first-hand information on what they need and what they don’t need in an app and what is going to satisfy them. This is going to help you with the answer to “how to create a fitness app?”.
Before you create a fitness app, it is important that you take a good look at your market competitors. This way you’ll know how those apps got popular and what they are doing right.
Let us tell you about some market popular fitness app from each type of fitness app we have informed you about. Whichever kind of fitness app you are going to make, analyze the below-mentioned apps to see how they are serving their users.
Whatever the fitness need is, chances are that MyFitnessPal is going to be the right fit for it. With a large number of features, MyFitnessPal caters to a wide range of users as an app that lets you build your own workout.
Known as the world’s most popular health and fitness app, myfitness pal can help the users lose weight, track exercise, change their diet, and many other things. Let’s take a detailed look at the main features of the app to see what kind of features you need to develop a fitness app.
With features such as a large food database, barcode scanner, recipe importer, food insights and personalized diet tracker, myfitnesspal can solve any of your diet related problem.
With myfitnesspal the users can set and complete a realistic fitness goal easily.
Myfitnesspal acts as a perfect activity tracker and exercises logger. The users can connect over 50 apps and devices, easily logging and tracking their exercise, and how many steps are taken throughout the day.
The social aspect of the app works to motivate and support the user as they take on their path to ultimate fitness. The users can ass their friends and people who have the same fitness goals, encouraging and supporting each other.
Users can get comprehensive progress reports and photos, to not only track their progress but also to share and celebrate it.
Myfitnesspal is one comprehensive app that includes activity tracker, diet and nutrition training and workout app. With its unmatched collection of features, it is one strong market competitor.
Now let’s look at a few other specialized fitness apps in the market.
The users can track any and every workout with the MapMyFitness app. Not only that but they can also get feedback based on their activity that leads them to live a better and healthier life.
The user can discover new workout routes, share and save their favorite ones. The community of 40 million athletes is bound to inspire and motivate even a beginner to reach their fitness goals.
With a vast array of features, the MapMyFitness app is one of the best activity tracker apps out there. It is a build your own workout plan app for users. Some of their best features are-
As a diet and nutrition app, Calorie Counter MyNetDiary has quickly created a stir being the most complete app for food and nutrition ever. It is a sophisticated and user-friendly food diary fit for everyone getting started on the path to a healthy life.
Calorie counter offers a large range of features to its users. These features are-
The Nike Training Club is probably one of the most prestigious gym exercise app. Loved by numerous athletes all around the world, this is the one-stop destination for fitness maniacs, whether they are beginning their journey or already a pro at fitness. It is an example of creating your own workout plan app.
Nike training club app, available for both Android and iOS, offers great features for all the users.
If you are thinking about how to make a workout app, then you should really follow Nike’s example.
As we already said before, staying physically fit is not enough anymore, it is important to achieve mental fitness as well.
Apps like Calm are letting users achieve fitness easily. They offer special meditation to help users with depression, anxiety, stress management, and sleep schedule.
The various features of the app make it easier and more interesting to meditate every day.
Secondly, a detailed market analysis is going to give you an idea about your competitors in the market and what they are doing. Their success and failure story is going to help you to make the right decisions for your app.
The second step in fitness and health app development process is to figure out what kind of fitness app you want to make.
To develop a fitness app, you need to know about the different types of fitness apps and how they help people with fitness. The fitness app developers need to be familiar with the various types of fitness apps to integrate the proper features into it.
Just like its name, the activity tracking app tracks the activity level of the user.
Whatever the user does this app will track it. From how many steps were taken during the day to the number of stairs climbed, distance run, all this information will be collected by this app. And as a result, it will show you how many calories you have burned during the day while doing these mundane physical activities.
The user data is usually displayed on the screen and the app makes charts and graphs recording the user’s activity level and their progress. This is the very basic form of the fitness app model and is made for the very basic users who want to get fit but cannot give time for a rigorous training schedule.
The diet and nutrition is the fitness app for the more health conscious ones, the ones who are a strong believer of the fact that “you are what you eat”.
These apps not only help the users to monitor what they are eating but also helps them to keep firm control over what they are eating. The diet app helps the users literally count the calories of what they are eating throughout the day. The users can keep an eye on how many calories they are consuming, and burning through physical exercise, control water balance of their body, and keep track of their body weight.
Focused mainly on the nutritional aspect of fitness, users can get a vast range of dietary services like set up personal diet charts, create grocery lists, meal planning, healthy cooking tips, etc. this is a fine way of finally sticking to the diet without having continuous cheat days.
This app is for the fitness freaks.
The workout app or the high-intensity interval training app is for the person who is dedicated to getting fit through exercising. This app is like having a personal fitness trainer in your smartphone. The workout app will provide the user with a proper set of exercises based on the personal information updated on the app.
The workout apps are perfect for the ones who have made gymming their religion. This is the best way to keep the users motivated to go to the gym every day or at least workout every day, even if it is in their home.
The workout apps give stats and details on how each kind of exercise will help you and which are the best workout regime for you. It will also help you to set a fitness goal and show you your progress.
Being fit physically is not enough, you need to be mentally fit as well.
Which is why there are so many mental wellness apps in the market. These apps come with a range of meditation and calmness exercises that the user can practice anytime anywhere. These apps are mainly aimed at gaining mental peace in this hectic everyday life.
The mental wellness apps offer not only meditation exercise, but they also come with a range of relaxing sounds to listen to when the user is trying to focus on their work, along with breathing exercise tips. The mental wellness apps are the perfect app for those who don’t have time to go to the yoga class anymore.
Once you have considered the types and decided that you want to make a fitness app for your business, you need to consider the MVP features for it. In order to make an application, you need to consider the importance of the MVP features first.
The MVP features are the very basic and minimum features your app needs to function as a fitness app. No matter what kind of app you choose to make, these features will be common for all of them.
Fitness apps are highly personalized apps. They need personal details like the user’s age, weight, personal habits and such. And to keep a track of these details, there needs to be a sign in and login feature.
The user should be able to make up a personal account on your fitness app. Give them the option to sign up using both email and social media sites like facebook and google. Make sure not to make the signup process too complicated, otherwise, the user might get annoyed and switch to another app.
The feature of signing up is not only for handling personal information, but it will also help the user to sync their data through various devices.
After the login and sign up feature comes to the feature of managing the personal account. The various details the user needs to put in the app are handled from this section. With the personal account, the user is going to be able to handle all the information in one place easily.
They can have the option to personalize the app features like the measurement metrics, enabling them to choose between pounds and kilograms, feet and meters, etc. remember to make these measurements international since your app will be used by people from many different countries.
Almost everyone today is using some kind of wearable device to track their fitness. So it is important for your app to be able to connect with the wearable device and sync the data accordingly. This way the user can have seamless access to all their fitness data both on their wearable and their phone.
Any fitness app has the feature of tracking user activity and keeping a proper log. The activity the fitness app will be tracking are walking, running, cycling, and swimming. Through this activity tracking feature, the app keeps a log of health and fitness stats of the user, such as how many calories burned, how many steps taken and miles run. Along with this you can create your own workout plan app, or add this feature to the activity tracking app to make it easy for users to plan their work out.
This feature can be used in both ways, with a Fitbit, and with a smartphone sensor.
The geolocation feature is important for a fitness app.
Firstly it helps the user to track their walking and running route. This way they can keep a track of how many miles they have walked or run, and how many calories they have burned with that.
Secondly, because it adds another layer of personalization to the app. With the geolocation feature, the users can get fitness tips based on their continent, country, weather, etc. because of course, the fitness regime for someone living in NYC is not going to be similar to someone living in China. Which is why to make your fitness app even more personalized, make sure to integrate geolocation feature to your app.
Don’t we all love to be reminded that we were supposed to work out but we forgot?
Okay, maybe we don’t. But the push notification is still a great feature for the fitness app you want to make. The notifications can give the users useful details and reminders such as workout routine reminder, new ideas about exercising, how many calories they have burned, etc.
But do give the users option to mute the notifications. Not all users are going to want to receive notifications all the time. So give them options to change the notification settings if they have to.
With this feature, you can give the users a chance to set up daily, weekly and monthly fitness goals. This will help them stay motivated and help them get fit faster.
You can also integrate the feature of the auto setting the daily target. With this, the app will set the targets for the user itself. Based on the information entered by the user. This way they will not set up impractical goals and lose motivation midway and stop using the app.
With this, you can give the users small fitness tips and tricks to keep them constantly motivated. These small workout tips can help them to get fit faster, something we all dream of.
The setting is an obvious feature in any app, but in your fitness app, you can make this the ultimate personalization center. You can stuff the settings feature with as many options as you want, just make sure that it is comprehensible by the user.
Whenever you are thinking about how to make your own fitness app, you need to consider some specialized features besides the MVP features, your app needs some specialized features based on its type to create fitness app.
These features are specific features for the different kinds of fitness apps we have already listed above. So let’s take a detailed look at what kind of special features you can add to your fitness app, based on its type.
So no matter what kind of fitness app you are planning on making, follow this list of specialized features to give the users a specialized experience.
If you want to create a fitness tracker app for Android, then you need some more special features besides the basic MVP features listed above. With these specialized features, you can create your fitness activity tracker app easily.
When you are thinking about how to make a fitness tracker app, you need the map feature. This is a more specific geolocation based feature. With the map feature in n activity tracking app, the user would be able to see the routes for their walk or jog, and they can also discover new routes for their exercise.
When you build your own fitness tracker, you can integrate small game like feature in your activity tracking fitness app. When a user completes a certain goal, they can be rewarded with special coins or gems, or they can be shown some special animation. The gamification feature makes the user feel more motivated.
An activity tracker can only give out a balanced statistic when it can track all your activity. Meaning, it also needs to track your sleeping time and schedule. By connecting the app with the wearable device, the user can track their sleep time. This way they can get into a better sleeping schedule.
In case you are wondering what special feature you need for making the perfect diet & Nutrition app, then you can follow this list of specialized feature.
The point of any diet and nutrition apps is to be able to track the calorie intake in everyday life. And to do so, you have to integrate the food logging feature into your diet and nutrition app. With this food logging app, the users can enter the information of what they had for meals throughout the day and they can see how many calories they have consumed. This way they can have firm control over the calorie intake.
A person can already have a meal, and then log what they have eaten, only to see that they consumed more calories than they should have. Which is why you need to have the calorie calculator feature in your app.
The user would be able to calculate the calories of the food they are going to eat and plan in advance what they are going to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
A dieting app is not complete without dieting tips. With this feature, you can present the user with specialized diet tips fit for their eating habits. You can also add recipes that are not only healthy but also tasty as well, motivating the user to follow a healthier eating habit.
To make a healthy meal, the user needs a healthy shopping list. With a shopping list and suggestions feature, the user can get easy suggestions on what they should buy and what they should not buy for their healthy eating habits. They can plan meals and get suggestions on what groceries they would need for that meal.
The workout app is for the hardcore fitness maniacs out there. These are the people who have made fitness their religion. So it is obvious that an app designed for them would have to have some specialized features.
Below are the special features you need to build a workout timer app.
We have mentioned this feature before, but when it comes to the workout apps, it is worth mentioning again. The wearable device integration is absolutely important for the workout app because it is the best way to track the progress of an exercise routine. The user can track their heart rate, calories burned, goal progress, etc. with the wearable device integration, you can make it convenient for the users to use your app.
A lot of time, a workout app is not enough. This is why you need to give the users an option to connect and chat with personal trainers near them. By having this network of gym specialists and personal trainers, you will give the users access to better exercise and training experience. Along with this, you can add the workout checklist app feature to it where the user can make their own workout checklist to follow.
The user must be able to log their activity during exercise sessions. This way they have a way of tracking their progress throughout time. Along with that, you should also have the fitness interval timer app feature, so that users can time their exercises. Your app needs to be the best fitness log app to give the users a perfect user experience.
The exercise videos and tutorials are an amazing feature to add when you create your own HIIT workout app. With this, you can give the newbies a chance to learn different exercises in a free, affordable and hassle-free way.
The fitness of the body is not enough. To be truly fit, one needs mental fitness as well. And that is where the mental health apps come in. the health fitness apps are made to make users fit from both outside and inside, and they are really important when you develop your own android app or iOS app for fitness.
If you are thinking about making a mental health app, then these are some of the specialized features you can add to it.
Meditation is an important way of getting the mind in a healthy place. So it is obvious that your app needs to have a meditation feature. But at the same time, not everyone who is going to use your app is going to know how to meditate. So you need a guided meditation feature for the app.
The guided meditation feature is not only going to help the user learn how to meditate but also teach them breathing exercises, mindfulness and train their mind to stay calm even in the worst of all situations.
In this fast-paced everyday life, no one has time to sit down for an hour or so, meditating for the mind’s peach.
Which is why you need to integrate the feature of short meditation sessions. These short sessions, lasting only 5-10 minutes, will be a quick meditation point for the users. It is going to be incredibly helpful and useful to the users.
With the collection of soothing ambient music and sounds, the users can feel calm and focused wherever they are. You can include sounds like nature sounds like a waterfall, trees rustling in the wind, chirping of birds and many more. This feature can help the users focus, and give them peace and sleep.
With the offline download feature, the user can take their meditation sessions anywhere. It is not possible to have an internet connection all the time, even at this age. So make sure the guided meditation sessions can be downloaded for offline listening as well.
When you think about how to make a fitness app, you have to think about the technical side of it as well. After you have made the important decisions about what type of app you want to make and what kind of MVP and specialized features you need for your fitness apps, you need to focus on the tech stack.
When it comes to the functionality of a fitness application, the tech stack is incredibly important. In this case, we can study one of the celebrities of the fitness app segment- Fitbit, and see what kind of tech stack they have implemented in their app.
So you have found out all about how to create a fitness app. But did you find out how to make money with your app?
Now that you have dived into the world of fitness and health app development, you need to learn about the monetization strategies that go with it. So let’s see how you are going to make money with it.
Ads are the universal way of making money with apps. And it fits your health and fitness app development as well.
It’s the simplest and most common way you can make money with your fitness app. Make the app free and monetize it with the right ads for your app. But there is a word of caution here!
Ads tend to annoy people, most of the time. So don’t overdo it with the ads throughout the app. They should be displayed in an organized way, and not pop up randomly while the user is going through that intense bit of workout.
Also, when you make your own fitness app, make sure to integrate ads that are relevant to health and fitness app development. These ads should be about sportswear and nutritional foods etc. just make sure you don’t lose users because of ads.
Subscriptions are the second universal way of making money with apps.
When you make a fitness app for your business, you can integrate multiple subscription plans to make money from the users. The basic subscription plans can be a monthly or yearly basis, which means the users would have to pay a monthly fee every month to use special features on the fitness app or pay a fee once every year.
The other plans can be a quarterly fee paid every three months. Including multiple subscription plans will make sure that the users can subscribe to it using a convenient plan for them.
When you develop a fitness app, you can have the feature of paid features into your app. It can be anything from personalized training sessions or in-app chatting with personal trainers or getting regular workout tips from the different fitness enthusiasts.
The fun part is that mobile fitness app developers can combine this monetization model with others as well for maximum monetization possibility.
The sponsorship for your fitness app monetization can work in two ways.
Firstly, you can get sponsors who will pay you so that whenever the users of your app want to buy something or want any external service, you direct them to the sponsor’s platform.
Secondly, you can promote any kind of fitness related products, and get paid a fee when the app user makes a purchase of the promoted product based on your app’s advice.
Sponsorships are an amazing way of monetizing your fitness app. Because not only you are going to make money with it, but you are also going to get the exposer you need to increase your userbase.
So now let’s take a look at the more popular fitness apps in the market that are going to be your potential competitors as you create your workout app.
Now that you have found out almost everything about the fitness app, it’s time to figure out how you are going to pick the right partner for your app development process. Chances are that you yourself are not very familiar with the extremely technical side of the app development process such as coding and design and whatnot. And even if you are, you will still need help to create a robust fitness app.
So how are you going to pick the right partner for the development process? Here are a few criteria.
The first and foremost thing to check out when choosing the right health and fitness app developer as your development partner is to check out their work portfolio. This way you would get a glimpse at the kind of work they have already done and if it is relevant to your project. Once you have an idea of their capabilities it will be easier for you to make the decision.
Client references are a big thing when it comes to choosing the right fitness app development partner. If they have already done works related to fitness apps, then the client references can help you understand whether they can do a competent job or not. Not just that, client references and reviews stand as a testimony to the skills and expertise of the app developer.
App development is not a blind job. The developer has to add value to your app as well, a value that might not have been there when you first started planning the app. The skills and expertise of the developer are going to add unique value to your app that is going to make it unique. So before you pick your app development partner for your fitness and health app, make sure that they will add unique value to your app.
Since fitness apps themselves can be quite technical to develop, choosing a team that is skilled in the technical aspects of app development is going to be better for your app. Here you can once again fall back onto client reviews and see what is being said about the potential team’s technical skills.
It may take more than this to choose the right partner for your health and fitness app development. But at the end of the day, the above-mentioned factors are the most important in choosing the right app development partner for your app. So, what’s your take?
A fit person leads a better life. This is the motto for people everywhere today. And keeping up with this value, the fitness app sector is getting more and more popular every day.
Which is why this is the perfect time for you to think about how to make a fitness app, and enter the market with your unique idea.
Before that, have a whiteboard session with your app development partner and figure out the fitness app development cost. Along with that, find out the requirements and deliverables to get that perfect app to compete with your peers.
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