How to Build a Fitness App Step-by-Step: MVP, Extra Features, and Costs

The popularity of fitness apps has been growing lately. This is the solution that allows you to control the activity, weight, and burning calories. You can add the game and competition moment to the training process. On the one hand, the fitness app market is on the rise, on the other hand – the cost of user engagement is constantly increasing, and you need to make sure that the project is profitable. In this article we will describe how to build a profitable fitness app, its cost, and characterize the successful fitness app and their features.

Are Fitness Apps Profitable?

The pandemic has changed the world. People now realize that health is a priority, and it needs to be given attention every day. However, even without a pandemic, the fitness app gives users plenty of bonuses, unlike a gym membership or a fitness trainer.

Fitness apps have become a fully expected and successful solution, investing in which pays off in almost 100% of cases due to the constant growth of the fitness community. There are several reasons for this:

sports and fitness for a long time is more than just a trend, as almost anyone has the desire to keep fit and tries to look for all possible ways and methods;

• Those who have not had the will or time to keep fit so far, have to do it during the pandemic, when many are transferred to a remote format of work;
• Irregular diet for various reasons (workload, long-term active or passive rest, problematic situations);
• Lack of knowledge in nutriciology and fitness area;
• Inability to correctly calculate the load, which can cause health problems;
• Inability to engage in training with the instructor for various reasons.

The fitness app solves all these problems. You can not only draw up a personal training program, choose the right exercises, program it to control weight and form, as well as visualize for yourself how to correctly perform a particular exercise.

Fitness applications are quite easy to monetize due to the increase of social activity, holding of promotions, creation of motivational content and offering interesting and favorable conditions to customers.

A well-thought-out strategy, taking into account the prospects of market development, allows not only to create a mobile application, but also to make money on it – monetize your app.

Best Ways to Monetize Your App

According to Gartner forecasts, only 0.01% of the total number of existing applications will be profitable in the coming years. Already, there are over a million apps in each of the App Store and Google Play stores, free apps account for 94.5% of downloads, and these numbers will grow in the coming years.

Let’s understand monetization business models.

• Freemium model
• Trial-access
• Sponsorship and Partnership Model
• Ads
• Premium Model

Freemium

The business model involves creating a free application with the ability to buy additional paid features. Free application with separate paid features. For example, a user can communicate with other users of the app completely free of charge via chat or voice. For calls to mobile or landline phones will have to replenish the account.

When monetizing mobile applications, you need to understand who will buy additional features. Fitness apps can offer advantageous rates for international calls, but they are paid by about 5% of users.

Ads

Earnings on advertising you can consider if you make a mass product. An application that will use tens and hundreds of thousands of users. If apps are low-attendance, advertising will not bring enough money.

• If you do not have an advertising sales department, then use advertising networks or mediators. Each region has its own popular solutions.
• There is a CPA model (cost per action). When the advertiser pays you for the user action. Learn CPA networks. Perhaps your app is suitable for this monetization model. The user browses commercials before showing the selected movie or buys access to the shows without advertising.
• Another method of monetization with advertising is the placement of banners and advertising inserts in the application. Used in free applications, such as weather informers, currency exchange rates, news, email collectors.

Trial-access

Access is granted to all functions, but for a certain period. Most often – from 7 to 30 days. Trial-access is considered informative. After studying the possibilities of the application, the user must decide whether to pay or refuse the application. A popular marketing way increases software sales by many times.

Subscription Model

The method involves a regular subscription fee for access to the features of the service. These can be cloud repositories, collaborative work systems (CRM, project management), film repositories, music, e-book libraries, and more. If the service is useful, the resources are interesting to the subscriber, the model will work. To be successful, it is important to determine the optimal subscription cost.

Premium Model

The user installs the application for free and gets access to the basic functionality. For additional opportunities, it is proposed to pay monthly premium access. In the absence of funds, the application continues to work, but in the mode of basic functions.

This method of monetization assumes that the user will receive maximum capabilities within one application after payment. For example, a pedometer app may offer extended workouts, individual diets, personal trainer recommendations, a selection of video exercises, i.e. full-fledged fitness applications and expert assistance.

Creating a fitness app is a complex and multi-stage process. To build your own fitness app, it will take a lot of time and effort or you can hire dedicated team with experience of fitness app development.

Sponsorship and Partnership Model

One of the newest monetization methods, which assumes that the app sponsors advertisers will reward certain actions of users.

What Type of Fitness App to Choose?

All fitness applications differ not only by types of monetization from each other in functionality, specialization in sports, activity tracking, form of motivation, etc. This is why they are divided into groups for ease of classification and user selection. This point should be considered before fitness app development, as it will determine not only the functionality, but also the potential users of the application.

Activity Tracking Apps. People are increasingly buying smart devices: Apple Watch, Xiaomi Mi Band, Smart Watch. With their help, the user measures the number of steps, the pulse rate and even the level of stress per day.

You need to think ahead of time about the development potential of fitness applications and add synchronization with wearable devices – users will appreciate. The audience for such apps is much wider than the audience for training apps, because they can be used by both professional athletes and those who do not go to the gym and do not enjoy sports.

Workout & Exercise Apps. There are both highly specialized Runtastic-type applications that track only one particular sport or one specific direction of impact (the same Runtastic controls only cardio: walking, running, bike), and «all in one» which will allow you to choose from a wide range of sports.

Diet and Nutrition Apps. Such fitness apps help track food habits, count calories consumed and maintain water balance. The nutrition control app provides the ability to set goals, check the calorie content of the product and find recipes.

Typically, these annexes may also contain:

• Product data sheets – allows the user to find information about the calorie content of the product, its proteins, fats and carbohydrates
• Calorie calculator – helps the user to calculate the daily norm depending on the features of the organism – age, sex, height and weight ratio
• Food diaries – user can record data on food intake during diet

Sometimes fitness apps can combine a few types. Good example of such an app is BodyO App which combines tracking and matching nutrition protocols, built-in training programs and sleep measurement.

Such a type of fitness app will be useful for a wide range of users. So it can increase the profitability of your app.

What Should a Fitness App Include? Main and Extra Features

Now you have to decide which features your fitness app will include. To help you with your choice, we have compiled a list of basic fitness features that will allow you to become a serious competitor for the already popular Nike Training Club or Runtastic.

Logging

Enable login via popular sources such as email, social networking, and phone number for more convenient user interaction with the application;

User profile

Users should be able to save information about their health and body condition from the first day of training.

Activity tracker

Add the ability to set goals so users can see progress. This is very motivating when you notice that the total number of steps per day exceeded the mark of 10.000, and the calories from the ice cream eaten yesterday before bed burned during the walk – so users understand why they are good today!

Goals are about competing with yourself. Striving to become better every day needs to be encouraged. Make sure that for each new record or completed goal the status of the user is increased: it can receive virtual or real prizes.

Filters

Allow users to choose a workout plan that suits their needs. To quickly find the right workouts, you will need to search and filter. The search options can be different – it is important to think ahead. It may be a filter based on the duration of the exercise, the level of training required, the type of load or the focus on a particular group of muscles.

Gamification

Progress indicators and leaderboards are another powerful motivator. The ability to compete with each other even if home training affects performance.

Nike Run Club has a cool option – you can set a goal together with your friends. Choose a distance, date and invite friends. Whoever does the best gets a gold medal!

Push-Notifications

Those with difficulty scheduling the day will appreciate the custom push notification system. The most common problem with sports is a lack of enthusiasm. Bad weather, laziness, a lot of chores – all this becomes a good reason to refuse to exercise or diet. Notifications will help users not to forget about the planned training.

A good fitness app is always ready to remind you of the importance of physical exercise. Setting the frequency of notifications – let the user decide how often they will “annoy” him and make him get up from the sofa or away from the computer.

Heath monitoring

Everyone wants to monitor health problems and such extra function can make your fitness app unique and more successful among the users.

Even fitness watches can be used as heart rate monitors, though not the most accurate ones at times.

Glorium Technologies team created sensors that measure vital health data, such as blood pressure, blood sugar, height, weight, fat mass, muscle mass, bone density, and hydration for BodyO App.

Geolocation

The fitness application can be used to select the route and enter it using the touch interface. This feature allows users to create numerous walking, running and cycling routes. It also helps in viewing and tracking the distance when runners or cyclists use the card provided by the software.

Personal mentor

Sports under the guidance of a highly qualified specialist is always calmer, so users will appreciate it if your fitness app will have access to expert advice.

Think about adding online tutor-supervised training – you can hire a specialist who will help your users to create a training program, teach tracking progress and set the right direction for physical development.

Chat

Add the ability to share results – so the motivation of users will grow. To avoid being unsubstantiated, we will give the example of the following case.

On the one hand, when no one knows that you have started sports – there is a temptation to reduce the workload or to miss the training. But if an app friend learns about it, there is an additional motivating factor.

Friends encourage users to continue to regularly exercise and add their successes to the app!

Synchronization with wearable devices

Most users have several devices that help them track physical activity during sports. Smart devices have become popular a few years ago, and today with their help all track health indicators.

The user who has a smart watch, most likely bought them for a reason – he will want to use them in training, therefore, will prefer an application that will work in conjunction with his device.

How to Build a Fitness App?

The fitness app development requires preparation. Think about technical assignment and analyze your audience.

Before you create a fitness app, check and follow the following steps.

Targeting

Identifying the target audience for your fitness app literally means finding the answer to the question of who will use your future fitness app? Psychometric and/or demographic methods can be used to segment audiences correctly.

Demographics and statistics help to create an average user identity, and psychographics suggest a suitable algorithm for an application. These options will help you understand how your future users behave and why they do so.

You can make your app more attractive, ergonomic and valuable, and create effective marketing campaigns using this data. Build a personal portrait of your future client before using your app and create a personal portrait of your client after using your app. The initial and final vision of your user will help you to stretch out the steps between these states.

To collect data, conduct research, surveys, and analyze the audience of competitors. The more you know about potential users of your future fitness app, the better product you can offer them.

Competitor analysis

Analysis of competitors – an important step in the development of the application and creation of marketing strategy. Look at your competitors and answer these questions:

• What are the features in their fitness apps?
• What reviews do their users leave?
• What are the pros and cons of fitness applications competitors?

You can mix and combine functions, create new mechanisms and combine different approaches to gain a competitive advantage. You can use your competitors’ flaws to build more popular and useful fitness apps.

Fitness app functions and algorithms

A workout guide is an integral part of any fitness software. Algorithms require input data from the user to better predict workouts.

Conditionally they can be divided into four categories:

• Based on data;
• Calculated mathematical algorithm;
• Behavior analysis.

Various features of the app, such as educational content on how to stay healthy and fit, improve attitude to workouts. Instructional videos with exercises keep users interested.

Adding social networking features to your app allows users to showcase their results and provides free advertising as they can share results on social networks. It is also very important to create social media pages for your app so that people can see what it is and gradually build a brand picture in their head.

Technology Stack for Fitness App

Think about languages (it could be different for iOS and Android), database, IDE, Web server, cloud storage, Social Authorization (Facebook SDK, Twitter SDK, Google+ SDK, Instagram SDK), payment gateway. For all this technology stack you need to hire competent and experienced developers.

If you are going to hire a development team, take some time to learn as much as possible about potential employees:

• Look at their portfolio;
• Study their professional history;
• Review your terms of employment and expected time frame.

Another alternative is to outsource a development team or one developer. This will save your costs and time on resource management. In-house team is not only about salaries, but also about sick leave, insurance, pension contributions, taxes. And hiring a development team will take around 1.5 months.

Especially if there is no product that brings profit, to take on wages, rent and taxes is simply dangerous for the wallet. Developer outsourcing from this point of view is more predictable. If you outsource, you’ll have a detailed evaluation, with a timeline and a plan.

Even if you are very far from IT, spend a little time studying your contractor before signing the contract. Then this time will pay off your own calmness and high-quality work. There are various ways to check the company on reliability, but at least if you do not find your contractors at

Clutch or Goodfirms then, to deal with these people can be a risky idea.

What is good for the result?

Activity. The more an outsourcing company asks, the more immersed it is in the project, the more it is interested in seeing the result as close as possible to your wishes.

Relevant experience and ready-made products. This is a great advantage if the contractor already has the competence and expertise in creating fitness apps. First, it shortens the working hours, and secondly, you do not have to explain how it should work.

How Much Does It Cost to Create a Fitness App?

It is time to move on to a very important and at the same time very problematic question – how much does it cost to build a fitness app. It is most convenient to calculate based on the estimation of developer`s work time. The average cost of work hours depends on the country of a developer.

In general, the average time to create a fitness app will be about 1728 hours. Based on the average cost of a work hour by a qualified developer 40 dollars, that will be a very rough cost of fitness app development. Everything depends on the functionality of your fitness app.

This seems to be a pretty impressive amount for a startup investment, but with qualitative adjustment of the work and subsequent support the app will begin to bring a tangible profit, when it gains popularity of the target audience.

How Can Glorium Technologies Help You?

• Ready-made staff of professionals. There is no need to look for dedicated developers in the labor market or train your staff. Developers from Glorium Technologies are ready to work. And afterwards, you will not have a headache, how to fire an unwanted employee.
• Our team takes over the whole project: business process survey, development, implementation of the app. This will help to achieve the best results in the shortest possible time.
• Various variants of the price model of work. In different cases, you can resort to the most convenient method of payment.

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