Create a Fitness App: Ultimate Guide
The fitness industry keeps flourishing, giving plenty of opportunities for businesses entering the market and users wanting to improve their well-being. If you also want to create a fitness app and grasp the potential of this industry, you are at the right place.
Today, we will explain how to create a fitness app that will please users and bring profit. The process is not as easy as it seems at first glance and requires deep expertise and involvement. To ease your way toward conquering this market, the Limeup team prepared this guide. The guide’s purpose is to give you a fundamental understanding of fitness apps, the important steps in this development process, and industry trends.
Despite the challenges, fitness app development is an exciting journey that, if organized properly, will pay you off with a loyal audience and growing profit. Keep reading to discover what stands behind fitness app creation and how to make this process efficient and hassle-free.
Fitness app market in 2024: a quick overview
Nowadays, more and more people are interested in adhering to a healthy lifestyle and increasing life expectancy. Tracking physical activity and health metrics is becoming a part of their daily routine. For this, people often use fitness applications that allow them to collect and manage health data securely in one place.
Because of this tendency, the fitness app market is becoming one of the most rapidly growing digital markets. The popularity of wearable devices and the rise of health awareness are the key trends shaping the market growth.
According to Statista, by the end of 2023, the fitness app market revenue will reach $5 billion. In 5 years, it will double, growing at a CAGR of 14.9%. As the same report uncovers, the active audience of the fitness app market involves almost 11 million users. The figure is projected to grow to 13 million by 2028, meaning a lot of new potential clients will join the fitness app community yearly.
Revenue in the Fitness Apps market.
To develop a fitness app, you should be aware of the market trends and competition. Among the key market players, we can mention companies like Nike, Google Fit, Under Armour, Azumio, MyFitnessPal, and others.
Many of these companies offer personalized user experience in their applications, which helps them turn fitness apps into a decent competitor to offline sports coaches. In 2020, for example, the number of fitness app downloads globally increased by 46% because of the rise of online fitness.
A big benefit of healthcare software solutions in comparison to offline solutions is that users can access them everywhere, improving their health and tracking data no matter the time and location. For many people, using fitness apps facilitates their well-being effort and helps them reach their health goals faster.
As you see, creating a fitness app is a chance to jump on the bandwagon and become a part of the growing fitness application industry. By doing so, you can start earning money while committing to a good goal and improving people’s well-being.
The next sections of this article will help you figure out what will be needed to create a fitness app. But before discussing it, let’s define various types of fitness applications to choose from.
Types of fitness apps
Users don’t download applications just because they’re pretty. Each app should serve a particular purpose, and to conquer the fitness app market, you need to define the type of future app based on its core function. Below, we outline the most popular types of fitness apps you can pick.
Main types of fitness apps.
Activity tracking apps.
Activity tracking apps can be general or target a particular audience, like cyclists or runners. The purpose of activity-tracking apps is to help users collect, manage, and track data on their physical activity. Physical activity includes anything from walking or running to doing different sports types, stair climbing, sleeping, or other.
The application collects various data, including hours of sleep, number of stairs climbed, types and duration of exercises, number of steps traveled, calories burned, cycling distance, etc. For this, the solution is integrated with wearable devices, like smartwatches, smart scales, or fitness tracking bands, and uses your geolocation to get metrics data.
People use activity-tracking apps to visualize and access their health data. By viewing charts and infographics, users can generate insights into their lifestyle, check their progress, and keep track of their well-being.
Diet and nutrition apps.
Diet and nutrition apps are one more app type you can build with the help of app development services. As we witness the growing trend for healthy lifestyle and nutrition, creating such an app is a great chance to enter the fitness application market.
With diet and nutrition apps, users can automatically count calories, keep track of their water intake, record their body measurements, check weight history, create meal plans, and more. Diet and nutrition apps can also offer extended features such as gamification elements, recipe portals, communication spaces, the opportunity to set and achieve personal challenges, etc.
Besides, such applications often have a barcode scanner feature integrated into the solution. Without leaving the app, a user can scan the barcodes of different products and automatically add them to their product list, as well as discover their nutritional value.
Workout and exercise apps.
More and more people prefer to subscribe to a workout and exercise app instead of paying for the services of a fitness coach. It gives them more efficiency and ensures 24/7 access to useful information. Thus, when building a fitness app, consider one more type — a workout and exercise application.
Such apps are used to access and manage training information. By training information, we mean personal information on training progress as well as publicly available workout videos, tutorials, and level-based training programs. Also, such apps can pick up the best online coach based on user preferences, health metrics, level of training, etc.
If you decide to build such an app, it’s recommended to give users the chance to get in touch with coaches to ask questions or solve issues. By doing so, you will offer more sophisticated fitness services, which will increase your chances to outperform competitors and win user hearts.
Smart coach apps.
This is a revolutionary app type that has started gaining popularity in the fitness app market. Smart coach apps leverage AI technology to analyze people exercising in real time. With the help of computer vision and ML algorithms, users can make sure their exercising is safe and free of injury risks.
3D sensors combined with AI analyze people’s poses, movement speed, intensity of exercising, etc. to check if users stick to the right exercise technique. AI leveraged in such apps is also capable of giving personalized recommendations on the right weight when exercising.
If you are going to integrate AI into your app, you will need to find a trusted tech partner ready to help you with this task. App development companies in the UK have vast experience in integrating smart technology into fitness software solutions. They can assist you at any stage of the product creation, ensuring that your product meets all market standards and the top industry trends.
Meditation and yoga apps.
Meditation and yoga apps help a user relax their mind and body, fall asleep, and relieve stress and anxiety. People use such apps to access yoga sessions, track their meditation progress, create personalized exercise plans, practice breathing techniques, and more.
Unlike one-size-fits-all videos available on the Internet, yoga sessions managed in the app are customized to user preferences and life habits. By using a meditation or yoga app, users make their way to well-being consistent and informed, which makes this app type extremely popular.
Monetize a fitness app development: Top 5 approaches
To gain profit from launching an app, you should choose between popular monetization approaches. Let’s discuss them in more detail.
Main ways to monetize fitness app.
Paid apps. Under the paid app model, users will pay to download and install your application. The sum will be fixed, starting from $0.99, and charged monthly or early. After the purchase, users get access to all features and functions at once.
To attract the audience to your product, you can offer a free trial where users will get the chance to try out the features and understand the app’s value before subscribing to using it.
In-app purchases. This model allows users to download your app for free but purchase extra features, content, or goods within it. To benefit from this monetization model, you should make sure that the target audience is interested in purchasing extra features.
Users often get irritated by situations when they download a free app, and then it turns out that some important content is unavailable until they buy it. This is why you should be very careful when drawing the line between free and paid features. Even when offering paid content, try to make sure that the free one bears a big value for the target audience as well.
Freemium. A freemium model suggests that you make a fitness app that will be free to download and offer some premium features at a cost.
For instance, these can be some advanced fitness training programs, ad-free videos, AI-powered recommendations, locked fitness content, etc. If users like the experience in your app and want to make it more advanced, they will purchase the freemium.
Ads. You can integrate ads into your application and earn money from users watching them. These can be banner, native, out-stream, or interstitial advertisements. As a result of this model, a partnering business will earn user impressions and increase engagement, while you will earn money from providing them with a space for displaying their ads.
However, this type of monetization is not the best solution for fitness applications as it can adversely affect user experience. For example, if you plan to create a yoga app, it’s better to avoid ads. As this application type is aimed at reducing stress, it will be incompatible with such a stressful situation when a user cannot skip ads in the application.
Sponsored content. This monetization model is the most effective and native way to earn money from launching a fitness app without disturbing a user. Apart from investing in app development, this monetization model requires you to put effort into networking.
Before releasing the project, you will have to find partnering health companies, equipment manufacturers, coaches, and fitness brands that will be eager to distribute their services or content via your solution. After giving them such an opportunity, you will be able to charge a sponsorship fee. The more users your app attracts, the more partnering companies will be eager to join your partner list.
How much does it cost to create a fitness app?
Project costs play a big role in determining the growth strategy. As a product owner, you have a task to make the app design process as efficient as possible without damaging the project’s quality and pace. If you already know what type of fitness application you want to build, it will be easier for you to estimate the approximate project expenses.
As said above, an effective way of cutting project costs is hiring an offshoring partner. Offshoring service costs are lower than onshoring because of the differences in the economic conditions in which businesses operate.
For example, hiring a developer from the US or Australia will cost you $120/hour and higher. Meanwhile, you can find a developer with the same level of expertise in Western Europe at $80/hour and or in Eastern Europe at $50.
In the table below, you see a rough estimate of the hours and development costs based on the product creation phase. If you already know how much work should be done, you can use the table to estimate the precise cost of your project. So, you can refer to this table after the product discovery stage to understand the precise budget needed to create a fitness app.
Team structure and scope of work are dominant factors that determine fitness app development cost.
Basic features to add when you create a fitness app
Here is the list of the basic features an average competitive fitness application offers. You can extend this list depending on the application type you build. Besides, it’s always a good idea to integrate AI capabilities into an application, providing users with advanced features and ensuring a deeper level of personalization.
Basic fitness app features that you need to include into the fitness app.
Authorization
Provide users with various methods of signing in and logging in. For example, this can be a registration via phone number and email, Google account, social media accounts, etc. Accompany the signup process with quick onboarding instructions that will help them figure out how to use your app, or provide users with short prompts that explain the app’s core functionality.
Authorization screens examples.
User profiles
A user should be able to set up a user profile in your application with personal info like age, gender, name, weight, height, etc. For you, the data from user profiles will be the source of knowledge of your target audience. For a client, the user profile feature will be the tool for adjusting the app and the workout plans to their preferences.
Goal-setting
With this feature, users will be able to set personal challenges or goals and take steps to achieve them. For example, one may set the goal of exercising 8 times per month. Another user can set the challenge of drinking 2 liters of water daily.
The feature of goal-setting will likely turn one-time app users into regular visitors as they will have the motivation to turn back and record another step toward achieving their goals.
Notifications and reminders
Notifications and reminders can be either general or personalized. General notifications will inform users about new training tutorials, keep them engaged with your app, remind them of exciting app features, etc.
Personalized notifications, in turn, will depend on the workout or nutrition plan each user follows as well as their training preferences. For instance, such notifications can remind them about their daily challenge of drinking water, or display a brief report on their progress.
Still, make all of these notifications customizable for a user to prevent them from feeling annoyed about repeatable messages from your app.
Activity tracking and analytics
Activity tracking and analytics are often underestimated by app creators. However, this feature is highly appreciated by users, who often like to look back to their achievements and draw insights from it. Also, such a feature may help healthcare providers better understand the trends in one’s health and lifestyle.
Activity tracking screens examples.
When developing a fitness app, consider adding this feature to help users make informed decisions on their health and life habits.
Social sharing
Social sharing gives users the opportunity to share their results with friends via the app, display their app activity on social media, invite people to join the community, and more.
Social sharing is a win-win feature for both users and a business. For a user, this feature will add social value to the application and give them the chance to express themselves via the activity in your app.
For a business, this feature will be an additional way of promoting your solution to a wider audience. Social sharing works like free advertising of your application. To make this process even more effective, make sure that your app has a social media presence.
Geolocation
The geolocation feature helps users optimize their activity by selecting effective cycling, walking, or running routes. Also, this function will record data on the distance the user travels when doing sports and the typical locations for doing sports.
Gamification elements
If you ask any of the successful UX design companies what they think about gamification, you are likely to hear that this feature positively affects user retention and engagement. By rewarding users and adding the elements of competition, you will keep your audience focused on their goals and help them maintain their motivation throughout the way.
Creation of competition among app users and reward system can be a part of gamification process.
To add gamification to your solution, offer rewards or badges for completing goals or create leaderboards where users will rank according to their performance.
In-app purchases
You can offer premium features, services, or content in addition to free-of-charge features. In-app purchases will help you earn more profit from launching a fitness application. To determine if you need such a feature and what pricing to set for extra services, do not skip the step of market and audience research discussed in the previous sections.
Third-party device connectivity
Try to make your fitness application compatible with at least the most popular wearable devices. The thing is, the users of fitness apps are often people interested in a healthy lifestyle. They are likely to use wearables to record data on their physical activity. If you ensure your app’s compatibility with such devices, you will also increase the time these users spend on your solution.
Make your app compatible with the most popular wearable devices to enhance user experience.
These were the basic features to include in your fitness app. Some more advanced options include live-streaming, educational portals, etc. At the planning stage, you will make a list of the essential app features based on insights into your target audience, competitor analysis, and the purpose of your app and precisely estimate how much time and money it will take for you to finish the project.
Need help with creating a fitness app?
In this article, we explained the basics of the fitness app creation process. You know how to choose the right application type, plan out the project, monetize your solution, and more. Now, it’s time to move to the most responsible part – finding a reliable partner and implementing the project. This is where Limeup can also help.
Limeup is an experienced design and development company that operates worldwide and creates products for clients across the globe. We work with startups and big companies from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, and many other countries.
For years, we’ve been helping clients bring their app ideas to life in correspondence with industry demands, market trends, and business capacities. Our strong side is the personalized approach applied to each client, which allows us to polish product ideas carefully before moving to the development stage.
Contact us if you need help with fitness app development. Our design and development experts will study your business plan and come up with the most effective strategy for product creation.