Know It All on Developing a Health & Fitness Application

It is estimated that by 2027, the health and fitness app market will reach a whopping 14.64 billion USD. Over the past few years, the fitness market is expanding immensely due to an increase in smartphone ownership and more importantly due to advancements in healthcare technologies over time.

We can still give a major chunk of credit to the COVID 19 Pandemic as it triggered people to stay fit, increase immunity and stay healthy in the long run.

It’s more than just a trend, as staying fit is a necessity! Gyms, spa’s, and fitness centers are already heading their way to success with people pouring in to get in the race of being super fit. Let’s check out if there could be a possible future for health and fitness apps development.

The increasing popularity of health and wellness applications has given rise to constantly growing health applications right from the beginning of 2020. And why’s that?

The major reason could be the worldwide lockdown wherein nobody had a chance to move out, everyone was required to maintain social distancing, and safety protocols restricted the world from doing anything!

At this time only mobile fitness applications were relied on for home workout sessions and possibly that became the breakthrough in understanding that health is a critical factor! But what do these health apps serve? Let’s find out!

 

Business Lessons to Learn from Top Health Applications

Here are the takeaways and imperative lessons to uncover from the top health apps-

• Customer comes first

This is the most basic of all! Every business always has a goal to retain users, no matter the industry you’re talking about. You would surely love to have increasing app downloads that aren’t the success measure anyway!

There are multiple ways to retain customers and decrease the churn rate through continued personalization and customization. It’s important to focus on creating a digital space wherein users can feel comfortable enough!

When sharing some content, businesses should be addressing the customers by spelling their names, making them feel more personalized, and simultaneously looking for the best ways to seek feedback from the customers. For every brand, customers are always the priority and should remain that way all along.

• Think out of the box

Offering exactly what others are offering serves no purpose as it’s already there in customers’ minds! The best part here could be having a secluded strategy that can bring more customers onboarded.

Your product strategy should not be limited to the regular stuff, instead, it should be ready to experiment with varied market conditions, take risks and develop the right approach to target customers. Out-of-the-box thinking can help brands excel in content creation and improve engagement with the audience as well.

• Set Goals to succeed

As a business owner, you must know what’s your long-term business goal and what steps you require to take in between for setting up a milestone. Goals can be considered as your checkpoints to success, probably the right strategy to stay within the limits of the pre-decided business goals.

They can keep the brand motivated and let them have a roadmap to develop and implement the right business strategy.

• Keep it Effective but Engaging

Business turns super serious after a point of time, if you’re only focusing on keeping it effective, you might be at risk of ending up looking boring! Health is a serious topic but it doesn’t mean it should be trapped in the monotony!

Gamification is one good method to make your app more engaging, you can reward customers to let it look more lucrative and let them feel they’re winning something by being associated with the app.

 

Read More: Health & Fitness Apps- A Boon in Healthcare Industry, Today & Tomorrow

 

Features Your Mental Health & Fitness App Must Have

Though the features completely depend on how your brand is willing to take it forward, we have created a list of most essential features you must not forget to include-

• Customization

Customizations are the key to success, why? More customized is always close to the customer’s expectations. this feature can be hugely extended to a large group audience that includes various ages, groups, gender, and others.

The app should be having the right features of themes, content, videos, and the essential functionalities which are required. It can include exclusive workout options for the users based on their previous sections or plan purchases.

• Tutorials

So, the regular picturization would not really help in the long run! You must have video tutorials, either paid or complementary so that the users can have a look and none of their training so far can go wrong. The videos will contain instructions, a trainer’s guide, and much more to keep the users interested and engaged.

• Rewarding & Incentivizing

Now that is the best part for every user! One should think of rewarding and incentivizing customers on their fitness journey.

For instance, if one can provide customers with incentives at the time of taking a fitness plan subscription, there will be increased chances of the plan renewal and referrals, considering the fitness journey experience.

• Payments

Having just debit and credit card payment options is too old school for today’s times! Think of including various payment gateways to ensure safe payments. One can also include simple transactions with an integrated invoicing and payment system.

Also, it would be great if one can disclose more payment information on the in-app purchases more precisely, helping users to understand the same.

 

What are the strategies behind the top-rated Fitness Applications?

Along with the essential features to have in your fitness app, there’s a need to have the right strategies working for you! Let’s check out the secret ingredients to your business’s success.

• Community Building

Right after the pandemic hit us hard, we all have realized that we are social animals and there’s a huge need to be surrounded, listened and talk with people in the community.

Human interaction shrunk to level zero during times of social distancing and all we need is to help people facing similar health issues, doubts or any queries find the solution through the in-app community.

One of the secrets to business success is building the right community. This provides an individual a sense of belongingness and digital space to interact with whatever is required.

• Competitiveness and Fitness

While you may be wondering how people can compete when they aren’t even physically present at a place! That’s the beauty of digital connectedness that people can easily be connected and stay competitive alongside. Ever heard about the concept of a leaderboard?

That’s what increases the competition among the pp users. As per research conducted by the US National Library of Medicine, competition can improve attention and learning.

• Optimized use of technology

Technology is widespread, and today we have it everywhere! There’s a sharp increase in wearables with smartphones being able to track the activity of users.

By integrating the app with the smartphone wearables including the Apple Watch, Fitbit, etc. which can detect motion and know when the user is walking, running, working out, etc.

Having the technology integrated into your fitness application can be of great use in the long term as one can easily track customer preferences, data, and required information for strategic marketing.

 

Read More: How Mobile App Development Bring Success to Fitness Industry

 

Latest Trends in the Fitness App Market

A survey states that by 2024, revenue in the fitness market is predicted to reach US$23, 127 million. Around 96 percent of app users make use of one health and fitness app, making them the most successful of all. Here are the latest trends in the market-

• Wearable Technology

Accelerating in the race, wearable technology is considered amongst the top adapted ones wherein users can track steps, and location, manage their workout schedule, take care of health through the quick view of pulse rate, oxygen, and much more. Your fitness app must have the technology integrated to make it more impactful for the users.

• Augmented & Virtual Reality

AR is a technology that seamlessly integrates digital content into a person’s real-life surroundings which can include health and fitness aspects. Virtual reality is also widely accepted and popular amongst the users wherein they can have a chat with the healthcare provider right through their smartphones or computer screens.

• Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning

We may not realize their importance but we’re using them almost every day! Bots like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana have already been popular enough can help in sending commands to applications. AI has touched various industries and has a fair potential to boost the fitness industry as well.

While machine learning technology is required for analyzing user data and recognizing movement while performing exercises and other forms of workouts. It includes geolocation and social sharing, fitness app streaming services, live workout sessions and so much more.

 

List of Leading Fitness Applications

While you must be thinking about what and when to implement, some brands are already steady in the race. Here are the leading brands topping the list of health and fitness applications-

• Freeletics
• Map My Run
• Strava
• JEFIT
• Openfit
• Seven
• Peloton
• 8Fit
• Nike Training Club
• Alo Moves

 

How much does it cost to develop a Mental Health & Fitness Application?

Like every other application, the cist depends on the amount and category of features you would like to add to the mobile app. The features include quality assurance, DevOps services, project management, and much more.

Conclusively, to create a fitness application one needs at least $94,350 for one platform (either iOS or Android) and $154,750 for two platforms which are based on a $50 per hour rate. Other factors which contribute to the cost of developing a fitness application–

• Features
• Platform
• Design
• Testing
• Team Location
• DevOps
• Tech Stack

 

Wrapping Up

The fitness market is building the right attributes and growing exponentially in the upcoming years mostly due to the increasing awareness amongst the people.

We hope this article has provided all the required information on developing mental health and fitness application which includes exclusive features, smart strategies, and the costing involved thereafter!

To grow and flourish in your business, it’s highly imperative to have the right team, smarter marketing tactics, and strategies that could work wonders for any business. What’s the wait for, get started with the best healthcare mobile app development services company instantly!