How to Create a Fitness App - Guide : Cost, Features and More

“How to Create a Fitness App?” is the smartest question to have in mind if you want to take your fitness based venture to the next level ! Read ahead to get all your related answers & more.

 

Yoga mats. Leakproof Sippers. Kettlebells. Dumbbells. Gym Towels. Activewear. Trainers….
You sure can recall placing an order for (or at least wishlisting!) one of the above commodities in the past 1 year.

Even a couple of years back, we used to think of fitness as an athlete-only thing or at most something that’s for the ‘obese’ or ‘underweight’ ones. However, over the last few years (2 years since COVID outbreak - reality check!) among many things that the pandemic has redefined for us, ‘fitness’ has been one of the most prominent one. And my opening statement makes you stand by the fact - I bet! After seeing even the muscular ones call it a quit under Coronavirus attack and the so-called ‘blessed souls’ somewhat survive with a lifetime organ damage after being Covid positive for a fortnight, people have started perceiving fitness as a way of life. 

Well, looking at the business side to it, where there’s proven demand there’s a business opportunity and the emerging ‘fitness at home’ concept clearly indicates a bright future for businesses that revolve around domestic fitness. On that note, to develop fitness app is a wise idea..only if you do it rightly. So here’s a comprehensive guide for all that you possibly need to know to ensure your fitness app is the right fit for the current (and future) market! 

Also, here’s a generic guide you may not wanna miss with your intention focused at ‘How to hire app developers?’  

Current Fitness App Market Scenario In A Nutshell

Before you go all out about making your fitness app the first part is to know the market going by that age old saying “Look before you leap”. Not to worry though, as Statista reports the number of fitness and wellness app users in the US has soared from 62.7M in 2018 to a whopping 84% in 2021 and clearly that’s a green flag! 
Well that’s from one perspective - let’s have a close look at the worldwide fitness app market size now. While the valuation of the fitness app market was USD 4.4 billion in 2020 the experts anticipate it to expand at a 21.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2021 to 2028. 

That was about the numbers but hey! Judging a market JUST by looking at the numbers isn’t a wise idea. Take the surgical masks for example. Giant packets of such masks made it to our regular list of weekly essentials for more than a year but clearly once the vaccination was majorly done, the mask usage slowed down, too. Given that, numbers show you how the demand has been lately but it can only be taken as a strong standpoint when paired with an in-depth reasoning and analysis to logically understand the future need of that particular product or service, for us, fitness apps.  Coming right up!

COVID-19 has caused several lockdown orders to roll in-and-out pretty frequently and soon after, for workspaces to universities, ‘remote’ functioning became the new normal and by now, many organizations have marked it a permanent while many others are planning to! Meanwhile, to align the lifestyle with the social distancing norms while the traditional fitness studios, yoga sessions and gyms were closed, virtual fitness initially came off as a ‘let’s try this’ and soon turned into ‘better than the traditional’ way to stay on top of fitness. Needless to say, how this reflects through the increased number of downloads and surely is here to stay with the virus variants coming off like popping corns & the remedy being using your own equipment at your own home for workout and fitness in general.

 

Types Of Fitness Apps 

‘Fitness’ is a wide term and it means many things - together. On that note, there are many types of fitness apps available in the market, too. While some of those fitness apps are extremely niche-specific (thus, having a very concentrated target user base!), the most popular ones generally fall under the below categories :

[1] Activity Tracker 

As the name suggests, activity trackers measure the user's physical activity throughout the day which includes every movement, even each footstep and finally generate reports on daily tracked activities and some also compare a day’s with the past days. An activity tracking app commonly tracks :

[i] Number of steps taken
[ii] Number of stairs climbed 
[iii] Sleeping hours 
[iv] Distance covered 
[v] Speed of walking / running 
[vi] Calories burned
[vii] Duration of the physical activity

 

[2] Diet And Nutrition Goal Tracker

Diet and nutrition goal tracker apps primarily store your basic physical details like weight, height, frequency and type of physical activity, medical issues (if any) and suggest you a permitted daily calorie count. From a user’s perspective, these apps are like a dietary diary where you note your meals and fluid intake and get suggestions on dietary improvements when required. 

 

[3] Workout And Exercise Guidance Apps 

A workout & exercise guidance application is basically a virtual version of a personal fitness trainer - it tells you what exercise plan to follow to achieve the user’s fitness goals. 

[4] Fitness Centered E-commerce Platforms

Businesses create dedicated e-commerce applications focussed around selling fitness products. These applications provide the users with anything and everything they might need during their fitness journey, and belong to different categories - starting from training attire, gym equipment to supplements like thermogenic fat burners, beta alanine, etc.

Many such ecommerce businesses also collaborate with the previously mentioned categories to boost their sales even more!
 

Basic Features That Your Fitness App MVP Must Have!

You must have already read our take on reasons to build a mobile app and now over to check out the niche features to tick the mentioned benefits to ace user engagement."

Let’s have a look at the features you should prioritize first and must include in your plan to create a fitness app. 

Advanced Features To Magnet The Fitness Freaks (& Amateurs) Right In!

The basic features make your app a ‘fitness’ app, but the fitness freaks out there have had it better till date. So, to woo the existing fitness app users you surely need to take a leap higher and give them what they’ve been looking for, or, something beyond their expectations. NO - I’m not just blabbering about the universal fact - I’m ALSO handholding you through the potent avenues which, if explored well enough, can help you hit the target! 
 

[1] Gamification - Community & Leaderboards

Gamification isn’t a new term to you, but a li’l innovation in this space can take your fitness app a long way! This isn’t any gut feeling - expert predictions clearly point at a 27.4% growth of the gamification market, touching a whopping $30.7 billion by 2025. 

It’s not just about time you create a fitness app - we all (or at least a lot of us!) have ‘been there, felt that’ at some point in our lives - thought of taking fitness seriously - Googled ‘How to lose / gain XX kilos in XX days’ and then..lost motivation. This is exactly where gamification steps in to pull motivation back and get us going. Whether through custom user avatars inspired by the trending comic / video game characters, or ‘John has bypassed you by 5 push ups today - can you beat that?’ sort of instant dose of motivation, tying the users fitness goals with leaderboards, levels, badges are sure to do your job (getting a loyal wide user base) and theirs (helping them stay on top of fitness)! 

 

[2] Integration With Music Apps

Working out with music playing around is a common preference and it’s a crazy hassle to manage both separately. What if your users could play their favorite playlist without toggling between apps? That’s probably one of those small (mostly overlooked) factors that can add up to user’s convenience doubling as your fitness app’s distinguishing factor. So make sure there’s a provision to integrate the popular music apps (e.g. - iTunes, Spotify etc) with your fitness app.

 

[3] Live Streaming (VoD)

Your fitness application will probably target a wide spectrum of users, implying your platform needs to host several types of content. Looking at the peak popularity of visual content across every other digital space such as reels, shorts and more, there shouldn’t be much confusion regarding the inclusion of the same in your fitness app. Just in case the previous statement triggers you to think “What visual content suits my app?” - then here’s your answer - implement short video tutorials helping your users master the hacks and techniques, conduct live interactive masterclasses by popular coaches or celeb trainers or simply do group meets where your users come together to share their views & experiences.

 

[4] In-Built Chat

Just commenting isn’t enough, chat is important too, when it comes to those chit-chats err fit-chats! Obviously you won’t want the users to go off your app when you could keep them right in with an engaging chat module dedicated to fitness talk. Maybe, steal the brownie points (and their hearts as well) with stickers and fun elements alike. 

 

[5] QR Code Scanner

Be it that medicine ball for home workout or that pack of quinoa for the salad bowl your app talks about - leaving your users off with the burden of search and find products is a clear turn-off. Let them scan the mentioned barcodes and cart it in a heartbeat (click, to be precise!).

 

[6] Scheduling Slots

The users can integrate their official scheduling apps like Google Calendar with these fitness apps, the data across both applications can be synced to help the users receive reminders to work out and avoid missing out on their daily workout. Another use case for this feature is a personal trainer scheduling app that allows a trainer to manage multiple appointments with different clients. The app can also show the necessary details about each client and their progress so that the trainer can plan the workout for each client, beforehand.

 

What Are The Challenges Of Developing Fitness Apps?..& How To Rock Them!

Fitness apps are contemporary hotcakes for sure but there exists chances of burning your fingers trying to bake the beau, too! Well, as they say, if it comes easy it won’t be worth it and yes, creating your fitness app will be worth it in the end, if planned with an app development partner that has been there & created fitness app success stories already. 

 

Let's Catch Up

 

While developing a fitness app, beware of:

 

[1] A UX That’s A Turn-Off!

Choosing the correct design when you create a fitness app is one of the most crucial tasks. A layout that makes it convenient for the users to feed in the data and see the comparative analysis of their activities over a period has the brownie points. On the other hand, a clumsy design that leaves your users clueless lets your competitors steal the good deal.
 

[2] Features That Are Too Complex Or Too Average!

First of all, try to answer these questions :

[i] Are your offerings well backed by the market demands?
[ii] Do your offerings have their USP planned?

The basic requirement to successfully develop your fitness app is to ensure your answer to both the questions are a solid YES. Plan your features in a way that isn’t just what every other competitors are commonly offering and also, isn’t so advanced that your users need to spend a mammoth amount of time to get familiar with it! Strike the right balance between user convenience and uniqueness of a feature-set that either none of your competitors are doing or at least, not doing as smartly as you’re going to.
 

[3] Failure To Befriend Hosting Devices’ Ecosystem 

Think of serving a well brewed cappuccino on a dinner plate, that’s pretty much how pointless it is to build a fine fitness app that doesn’t work well on your target users’ preferred devices and ecosystem! Many apps overlook the need to link their star content or features native to the devices, motion sensors for example and that’s what a wrong move is. Make sure you’re keeping a strict eye at content linking!

 

[4] Data Security Measures Against User Info

Fitness trackers require quite a few personal details from the user and it’s a given that your app should live up to their security concerns. So make sure your app encrypts the shared info well with a tested security protocol. Also make sure to keep an eye for any loophole as the security factor can make or cripple your app’s popularity no matter how strong the other attributes may be.

 

[5] What’s Worse Than Performance Glitches? Platform Specific Performance Glitches! 

Difficulties running on differing platform operating systems (such as Android or iOS), or rendering from desktop, to mobile, to tablet is a major turn off. So take a note of all the tech specs your users may be familiar with and build your app to run smoothly on all of those (or most)!
 

How To Monetize Your Fitness App Smartly?

You’re probably not getting into this mammoth investment of effort, dollars and time without any plan for profit, right?

Talking about turning your fitness app into a money-making smartie, the good news is, there are quite a few ways to make profit. All you have to do is weigh them against your financial goals and choose the best. Here’s the list:

 

[1] Paid Apps

 

How Does It Work?

The first step for using the paid apps is to buy it. The price of such apps are majorly influenced by the functional type of the application i.e. what (or what all!) it does, the platform that the app is based out of, the development efforts go into it for coding from the scratch, bug fixes, maintenance and updates. 

Pros

With paid apps you can get an instant profit
Works best for a simple fitness app (e.g. - an abs strengthening workout plan app, a healthy eating guide app etc.) without serious feature-rich updates planned for future, as for these the users know what they want is what you provide. 

Cons

The price of these apps are generally not dirt cheap given the factors that their price depends on. Thus, the users often skip these apps as there’s no trust building phase and they are not ready to spend on an app they haven’t experienced even a bit of. 

 

[2] In-App Purchases

 

How Does It Work?

Following the ‘in-app purchases’ model you need to provide a free fitness app and make specific offerings payable. There is no such restriction regarding what you can make a paid offering, it can be a fitness score comparison with fellow app users with similar health goals, custom diet tips, access to the user’s past activity history and many more.

Pros

Spikes higher interest in users as they can still enjoy a set of features without paying a penny and only opt to pay when they really want to! The more creative you get with the marketing here, the more revenue you can generate with this model.

Cons

Higher requirement of maintenance and backend efforts for both free and optional features

 

[3] Freemium

 

How Does It Work?

Freemium is a model which has a part of it (the basic features) as ‘free’ and a part of it is ‘premium’ (which is paid). 

Pros

Freemium is one of the most popular models because it strikes the right balance between general interest and revenue generation.

Cons

If the basic features are way too basic i.e. competing apps have those along with some of your ‘premium’ features for free - hard luck with ROI!

 

[4] Ads

 

How Does It Work?

Ads are a mutually beneficial monetization model where you allow complementing and non-competing fitness-oriented businesses to run advertising campaigns over your platform & in exchange you get a commission every time your users view or click on their ad.

Pros

Spikes higher interest in users as they can still enjoy a set of features without paying a penny and only opt to pay when they really want to! The more creative you get with the marketing here, the more revenue you can generate with this model.

Cons

Welcoming too many ads may scare (or annoy!) your visitors away

 

[5] Sponsored Content

 

How Does It Work?

Sponsored content implies a monetization model where you accept relevant content from non-competing fitness businesses (e.g. - fitness trainers, health/ wellness organizations etc). This way you provide them a platform to share their presence and they pay you a fee for the same.

Pros

Getting best of both worlds at a single space and NOT having to pay a penny - that’s what makes this model a safe monetization model

Cons

Knowing what content to accept and what to not is a crucial decision for the ‘sponsored content’ model and careless choosing can kill the potential.
 

How To Develop Your Own Fitness App?

Coming to the step without which you just can’t have a fitness app in place at all - leave alone good or bad - development phase it is! Here’s a step-by-step guide to create a fitness app the foolproof way :

 

Create A Fitness App Step 1 : Market Research 

For any new software or application to be a crowd-favorite the basic requirement is to provide the best of features that the most popular similar apps are offering plus your USP that translates into more convenience for them (I know this is the umpteenth time you’re hearing me use the word - convenience - but really, that’s the trump card!) .

You may find that your user group may prefer to run your app on a tablet during the day and then switch to a TV or check a few stats on their wrist in the evening.

Some of the questions you’ll need to answer at this step include:

What’s my USP?

What mobile (and other) platforms do I need to cover?
How exactly do I envision people using the application?

 

Create A Fitness App Step 2 : Document Your Requirements In Details

The next step is to put the app plan from your head to the paper. With the research data backing your thoughts, document all the features & functionalities you want to incorporate while you create a fitness app. Because clearly, it isn’t a great idea to kickstart a keto diet randomly & decide your weight management goals next! Once you’ve figured out what you want your fitness app to look and behave like, the development phase will run smoothly. 

 

Create A Fitness App Step 3 : Find The Right Development Team

Now comes the most crucial step - finding the right hands to shape your fitness app vision. To make this process a little less complicated, try answering the below questions for each from the shortlisted app development companies you list after the thorough vendor research :

[i] Do they have the experience of fitness app development?
[ii] Are they able to enrich your plan with their industry insights?
[iii] What do their clients have to say about them?
        

Once you have these 3 questions sorted - you know whom to opt for!

 

Create A Fitness App Step 4 : Test & Provide Feedback

Development is on your chosen fitness app development company but rounds of testing should be carried out on your part too! The more rigorous the testing is, the better will be the user experience. So keep the test and feedback loop circling on so that even the bare minimum glitches are fixed before it steps in the app market.

 

Create A Fitness App Step 5 : Launch!

Here comes the final (and most awaited!) step - fitness app launch. A concrete marketing strategy and a well-tested functional product is the secret to success. 

 

Plan Your Fitness App Today !

 

How Much Does It Cost To Make A Fitness App?

This isn’t much of a brainer to know even when avocados don’t have a fixed price, there’s no specified fitness app development cost either. Ideally the cost of developing fitness apps broadly depends on the following factors :

[i] The complexity of the business logic
[ii] The number and type of features
[iii]The timeline you’re looking at for app launch
[iv] The platform of your app

Here’s a look at the ballpark range of the cost associated with the development of fitness app:

For a simple fitness app with only basic features can cost around $20,000 
For a sophisticated multi-featured advanced fitness app the price can soar up to $100,000

 

Why It’s A Wise Idea To Develop Fitness Apps With BinaryFolks?

When it comes to fitness app development - whether a gym software or a diet app or any other fitness-related software / application, you are probably looking at -
A solution with the least cost 

OR

A solution that serves the job the best possible way
Most obviously, no ‘extraordinary’ solution comes at an ‘ordinary’ price. 
BinaryFolks works out your own unique idea of a fitness app straight into a fully functional market-ready solution which is further enhanced with insights from our completed projects. Our experienced & highly skilled software developers’ hands-on expertise of developing contemporary health and fitness apps to several health and wellness clients from across the globe especially from US, UK & Australia. Here's a quick look at what you get as you opt for fitness app development with BinaryFolks:

 

 

Conclusion 

Wasn’t that all you were possibly thinking of (and more!) since you had “How to develop  fitness apps” in mind? Now it’s time to develop it and see your fitness app climb up the growth path. Got one more question?

           
Ask Us Now !