Increased usage of smartphones and the emergence of innovative technologies triggered a wave of mobile fitness solutions. In accordance with the research by Reports and Data, the worldwide fitness application market is anticipated to reach over $14.6 billion by 2027.
In this article, we will consider how to build a fitness app, what features you should include, and what budget you will need. You will also learn how to engage the audience and reduce costs. Let’s get started!
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, people were forced to stay at home. Instead of going to gyms, many of them began actively using workout apps:
The growing investment in mobile fitness app development has gained momentum. The newcomers are entering the market with new ways of making their iOS and Android solutions more engaging, valuable, and user-friendly.
So, you’ve decided to create a fitness application. But where should you start? How do you build a product that will provide an amazing user experience and generate revenue?
You should take into account the following 7 points before making your own application:
Development approach — If your purpose is to generate higher revenue reaching iOS and Android users, there are two options: cross-platform and native development.
Choosing the first way, you create one mobile fitness app that works on both platforms. Making a native application, engineers write two code bases. While a cross-platform approach allows reducing costs, native solutions provide a better user experience.
Taking into account all of these points, you will prepare a successful strategy for making a mobile fitness app. The development process should consist of the following stages:
Competitor analysis — As the market provides numerous mobile fitness applications, you should find something that will make your solution unique. Analyze your competitors, including product features, design peculiarities, platforms, user reviews, etc.
You can check out customer feedback—both positive and negative—on the App Store and Google Play. This will help you define the strong and weak sides of your rivals and understand how you can stand out from them.
Analysis of the target audience — Analyzing competitors, you will see what issues and preferences their customers have. You can find your audience in social networks, groups, forums, etc.
Read their posts and comments, communicate with them to clarify their needs. Define a user persona, indicating things such as age, country, goals, for example, to get fit, track physical activities, build habits, or live a healthy lifestyle.
MVP development — MVP, or a minimum viable product, is a solution with a minimum set of features to perform the required task. We recommend you to use this approach as it offers plenty of advantages.
First, it will allow you to cut the cost of developing a fitness app. Second, you reduce the time-to-market. Third, you attract early users and collect their feedback. Analyzing customer reaction, you receive a clear vision of what you should improve or change.
Creating only the necessary functionality, you prevent overspending and engage the audience. You can learn more about this practice in our article about MVP startup development .
Now, you have a clear idea of how the fitness app development process should look like. The next question you should consider is choosing the type of IT service vendor.
Choosing a trusted provider is very important to create a quality fitness app on time and within a budget. A reliable and experienced IT service vendor will help you in a variety of tasks:
So, why should you outsource your project?
Recently, IT outsourcing has gained huge popularity. By delegating fitness app development to a third-party contractor located abroad, you will significantly reduce costs while saving or even increasing quality.
According to the research by Clutch, businesses in the USA choose this approach to boost efficiency, access field-specific expertise, and relieve employees from performing software-related activities. At the same time, you cut expenses by 30-60% depending on the region you send your project to.
For example, while in the USA and UK hourly designer and developer rates vary between $50-$150, in Eastern Europe they work at $25-$50.
If you don’t know what type of IT service vendor to turn to, read this article “Choosing the best way: IT outsourcing or in-house team?” . Also, find out why Belarus is a great IT outsourcing destination .
Design of your mobile fitness application is one of the most important project development stages. If users don’t like how it looks, they are unlikely to install it, especially when there are so many competitors on the market.
You should focus on creating a quality design: visualizing the app structure with the help of wireframes first and then building a clickable prototype to see it in action.
Don’t overwhelm our product with numerous elements as it disrupts the user experience, making it difficult to find the required button, information, etc. Assure that your solution looks and performs great on all mobile screens and devices.
Time to design a mobile fitness app: 100-150 hours.
The number and complexity of features are one of the key factors that affect the end product cost. Before making a mobile fitness application, you should define what functionality it should have to meet your budget and satisfy user needs.
To make a great fitness app, you should first add this feature, so that users can view their data, statistics, and achievements. Include in user profiles fields to collect information about age, weight, height, etc., taking into account units of measurement employed in different countries.
Provide users with the ability to sign in and register in your workout or nutrition application via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Wearable devices have gained high popularity over the past several years. Allowing people to track physical activities, they are an important part of the health and fitness market. Wearables can collect different types of data, for instance:
When building a fitness app, employ HealthKit and Google Fit APIs to access the information from various Android devices and Apple Watch. Activity tracking can be also carried out using smartphone sensors.
When you think about how to create a fitness app that will generate revenue, keep in mind that goal setting is one of the best features to motivate users. Setting and accomplishing objectives, they will build healthy habits, improve their physical form, and stay in shape much easier.
If you aim to create a workout app, this feature is a must-have for it. You can provide users with a wide range of workouts, indicating their type, duration, and level of complexity. Include tips from professional trainers to engage the audience, show them videos how to do physical exercises. Furthermore, you can allow users to form their own workouts.
Note: One of monetization strategies is to offer advanced workouts in the premium version of your mobile fitness application.
Calorie counting is another important feature to include in a nutrition or fitness trainer app. It will enable users to monitor the number of calories they consume and the number of calories they burn when doing exercises, walking, or throughout the day.
This feature will allow users to create workout routes, monitor the current location, and automatically track covered distances.
When asking yourself how to develop a cool fitness app, consider adding educational content, say, a small blog with personal workouts, tips on healthy lifestyle, and recommendations from famous trainers.
With the help of push notifications, you will be able to remind users about doing planned activities and achieving their fitness goals. This will motivate them to open a workout application and use it regularly.
Time: 100-120 hours.
We’ve considered the basic functionality for your product. However, how to make a fitness app that will stand out from numerous competitors?
When developing a fitness app, make integration with social media to let users share their achievements with their friends and followers. For example, they will be able to share content—their progress, personal records, achievements, photos, motivational quotes, etc.—by publishing posts in their social network accounts.
Gamification is one of the best features to build a fitness app that will stand out from the crowd. Rewards, badges, scores, levels of progress will help you motivate the audience use the app and accomplish goals while boosting satisfaction.
Time: 200-300 hours.
The cost of developing a fitness app can range from $24,500 to $175,500 depending on various factors such as:
The price of creating a mobile fitness application with the key functionality in:
The cost of building a mobile fitness app with extended functionality in:
Although the market is very competitive, there are secrets that will help you build a successful solution. Before making a mobile fitness app, analyze your competitors, define the target audience, learn user needs and preferences. This will let you get a crystal understanding of what functionality your product should have.
Start your project with an MVP to improve time-to-market, reduce costs, test ideas in action, collect customer feedback, and extend your product accordingly.
To create a fitness app of the highest quality and monetize it right, consult with an experienced IT service vendor specializing in iOS and Android development. You can find it via trusted B2B review and rating platforms like Clutch , GoodFirms , AppFutura, DesignRush, or TechReviewer .
If you want to receive a free consultation on building an awesome fitness application, drop us a message via contact form or email a.volchek@arateg.com .
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