Health and fitness have always been one of the top priorities of our lives. Gone are the days when you had to struggle to find fitness coaches who would instruct you on how to stay fit and healthy. In today’s digital era, the health and fitness industry is undergoing a complete digital transformation. Health and fitness app development has offered solutions ranging from healthy diet routines to weight loss exercises.

As more and more people are becoming conscious about their health, fitness applications are all the rage right now. With the temporary closure of gyms and in-person training, people relied on fitness applications to stay fit and motivated. From home workouts to fitness coaching to diet charts, all became accessible with a single tap on their smartphones.

As the demand for fitness application development is rising, it is a great opportunity for those who are looking to expand their business and serve their clients virtually through fitness apps. If you’re looking to build a fitness app that stands out, this article will provide you with all the essential details you need for fitness mobile app development.

But before jumping directly to the topic – ‘How to create a mobile fitness app’, here are some trends and facts that will strengthen your decision to build your own health and fitness application. Let’s take a look!

Top Fitness App Development Trends

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of mobile fitness app solutions. People embraced these solutions to stay fit and healthy during isolation. And, applications offering virtual training along with social media elements attracted more users to onboard.

• Health and fitness app downloads grew by 46% globally between Q1 and Q2 2020.
• The 5G technology offered smooth video connectivity to enhance live fitness training and workout sessions
• The popularity of smartwatch apps will increase with the launch of more wearable devices in the market
• 60% of Americans are likely to cancel their gym memberships

The Global Fitness App Market Size

Since the pandemic, the global fitness app market size reached $3.5 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach around $14 billion by 2026, and $15.2 billion by 2028. Moreover, 87.4 million US-based users are using mobile fitness solutions.

Benchmarks for Fitness App KPIs

When you develop a fitness app adhering to the best design and development practices, you can expect the below listed KPIs from your app.

• Increase in conversion rate by 28%
• Only 5% of the top 100 fitness apps (Apple) have ratings below 4 stars
• Around 9.41% are daily active app users
• Expect more than a 7% average retention rate after one month

Types of Fitness and Workout Applications

Before you hire Android developers or iOS developers for your fitness app project, make sure you are clear with the type of fitness app you want to build. To help you decide better, we have listed the types of fitness applications with their key features and examples.

• Smart Coaches

 

• Activity Tracking

 

• Workout Logging Apps

 

• Diet and Nutrition

 

Fitness App Development – Key Features to Consider

To make your fitness application impactful, you need to think about the essential features you want to add. You may consult with an experienced iOS or Android app development company that can evaluate your feature list and provide you with the right suggestions on the fitness app features.

If you’re building your fitness app from scratch, it’s wise to start with an MVP. A Minimum Viable Product with basic features can help you understand whether your app is useful for your target audience and how you can improve it in the future.

Here’s a List of MVP Features for Fitness App Development

• User registration and onboarding tour

 

• Sign-up/Login

 

• User profile

 

• Goal setting

 

• Activity tracking

 

• Meal plans and calorie counting

 

• Global and local statistics

 

• Workout and exercises

 

• Third-party integration

 

• Integration with wearables

 

• Audio/video player

 

• Fitness database

 

• Product and healthy recipe database

 

• Customization options for Workouts, Diet Plans, Recipes, Exercise Sets, etc.

 

• Push notifications and reminders

 

• Personalized recommendations

 

• Profile settings

 

• Geolocation integration

 

• Customer support services

 

• Payment methods

 

Here’s a List of Advanced Features for Fitness App Development

• Barcode scanner

 

• Video-on-demand or live streaming

 

• Coach-on-demand

 

• Social media integration

 

• Community and leaderboards

 

So, these are the key features that can make your fitness mobile app more powerful and useful for your target audience. If you have more unique features in your mind, you may note down all of them and consult with a professional mobile app development company to understand if those features can solve your users’ problems.

As a reliable Android app development company in India, we have experience in creating health and fitness applications enriched with features that makes them highly engaging and intuitive.

Fitness App Monetization Strategies

Of course, you need to ensure that your mobile fitness app gives you desired results. There are several ways to monetize your app. Following are the main fitness app monetization strategies that you can choose from to generate profit or revenue.

• Paid Apps

 

Users need to purchase your fitness app to access its features and benefit from it. You can offer a free trial to your new users and if they find it valuable, they are most likely to purchase the app or subscribe to continue using it.

• In-app Purchases

 

By offering a free fitness app, you can still make money by encouraging them to make in-app purchases. For example, they can buy advanced feature settings or premium content in the app.

• Advertisements

 

You can allow other fitness companies to run their ad campaigns in your app and you can charge a cost-per-mile commission fee.

• Freemium Apps

 

In freemium apps, users can use the basic app features free of cost. However, they need to pay for the premium features. This type of monetization model is also known as the premium subscription model where basic features are free to use but advanced fitness plans or complete diet charts are chargeable.

Fitness App Development Stages

Whether you invest in an iOS or Android app development company, the following steps remain more or less the same for the fitness application development process. Let’s take a look at the process to build an ideal fitness app.

1. Discovery

At first, your mobile app development team will conduct preliminary market research to see if your fitness app idea is marketable and useful. The entire development team will sit with you and brainstorm on the following points

Create your app’s vision covering your challenges, rivals, solutions, requirements, acquisition channels, revenue streams, and your app’s unique value proposition.

Study your fitness app’s logic

Prepare a list of epics based on the primary app functionality

Create a user persona for your potential customers

Make a table with epics and prospective user stories

Create an idea for your app’s smooth navigation

2. App Idea Validation

During the discovery phase, you analyze problems that your fitness app will resolve. At this point, you check the solutions the app can offer to your users. A team of a product or project manager, UI/UX designer, Android/iOS developer, backend developer, and QA engineers is required for your app idea validation.

3. UX Design Strategy

At this juncture, the UI/UX design team works on an intuitive app interface and screen relationships. During this stage, the app’s UI/UX designers:

Build a data structure and relation in an information diagram

Create a reliable app prototype with a highly interactive interface that displays where all the app’s control elements are placed

Create a project draft plan including assignments and deadlines

When a high-fidelity app prototype is ready, then it is transferred to the design and development team.

4. App Design and Development

At this stage, your fitness app development backlog is divided into sprints, which are usually completed in two weeks. A project manager prioritizes tasks, tracks their progress, and keeps a record of the backlog.

During the design concept sprint, the style guide is approved to be used in any part of your app project.

The design and development team defines the design functionality, improves documents, and creates the technical environment for the subsequent sprint at the time of the technical setup sprint.

The developers build the app during the development sprint, and a project manager creates plans for the next sprint and prepares documentation.

5. App Testing and Enhancement

This step is important at every stage of the fitness app development process. When your fitness app is fully functional and ready to be delivered, the testing and quality assurance stage ends. However, it may resume if you need to make changes or improvements to your app. At this point, the test engineers perform the following activities:

Track KPIs for your mobile fitness app

Obtain feedback from app users and analyze it

Identify the loopholes or faults in your app

Fix flaws in your fitness app

Enhance the functionality of your app

Final Thought

Just like any other type of mobile app development, the process of fitness application development can be difficult. However, it can be effective and worthwhile if your fitness app includes useful and out-of-the-box features that are loved by your users. To create a valuable fitness app for your users, you must provide them with customized workout plans tailored to their needs and preferences. If your app helps your users in achieving their fitness goals through helpful features, then your app is likely to become successful in the market.

If you want to build a health and fitness app for Android users, you can hire Android developers from us to build a fitness app solution that is loved by all fitness freaks.

FAQs

Q.1. Does a fitness app require HIPAA compliance?

Ans. Mobile fitness applications usually do not send Protected Health Data (PHI), so it does not require HIPAA compliance.

Q.2. How do I make my fitness app more secure?

Ans. You can make your fitness app more secure by integrating bio authentication Facetime, TouchID, or social logins.

Q.3. How much does it cost to build a fitness app?

Ans. The final cost of building a fitness app depends on the number of platforms you want to build the app for, the features and complexity level of your app, customizations and integrations, post-launch support, etc. You may get in touch with us to get a free quote for your fitness app development project.