20 May 2022
The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed people’s perspectives on many things. And above all — their attitude to overall well-being. Long lockdowns and social distancing restrictions have given the health, fitness, and wellness industry an unprecedented boost. However, while the world is gradually returning to the pre-pandemic lifestyles, most experts agree that digitization is here to stay, forming our “new normal”.
If you are thinking of how to start a fitness app or already have fitness app ideas, the Rocketech analysts put together business and tech insights that would help you better understand the latest industry trends.
How Digitisation Changed the Fitness and Wellness Industry
The pandemic’s beginning affected the fitness and wellness industry heavily. Suddenly, gyms, yoga studios, and personal trainers couldn’t provide their services. It led to all sorts of video streaming and mobile apps becoming extremely popular. Businesses needed to come up with new ways to stay afloat in a short time.
According to Statista, fitness apps generated over $13 billion in revenue in 2021 and are projected to bring their owners over $30 billion worldwide by 2026. Moreover, if you dive deeper into fitness app stats, you’ll see that MyFitnessPal alone made over $40 million for its developers in 2021.
Today, health and wellness products form an entire industry as many people have gotten used to enjoying all the benefits of fully personalized services in the comfort of their homes. Furthermore, wellness is no longer “simply the absence of disease” but a multidimensional concept that includes physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and other aspects.
Fitness App Types
The multidimensional approach combined with the digitization of all areas of human life has created various types of applications and other tech-driven products. Due to a lot of market competition, such products have become more personalized and precisely target different audiences according to not only age, weight, or fitness goals but also users’ lifestyles, personal preferences, and opinions.
Workout Apps
It’s perhaps the most popular type of fitness app. The app should include workout plans and content describing techniques and workout kits. The main goal of this fitness app is to show how to do exercises, as well as keep track of workouts and progress in an easy-to-understand form.
Trackers
Fitness tracker app development takes up the largest segment of the related market. These are relatively simple apps that monitor specific parameters (that’s their main goal). It can be the number of calories consumed, distance traveled over a certain period, running speed, or times of activity (or inactivity for sleep trackers). The app uses a mobile phone accelerometer or connects to third-party devices like a heart rate monitor or fitness bracelet.
Creative ideas help businesses create in-demand niche products.
Project Steps combines a fitness tracker, a coupon application, and a social network for a local community. Not only are users creating healthy routines but also staying motivated by the offers from restaurants, eco stores, fitness centres and other merchants advocating healthy lifestyles.
Personal Trainers
Such apps can become game-changers for physical gyms and fitness centers. They enhance the customer interaction experience and strengthen branding strategies. Businesses can advertise new training programs, particular professionals, or special offers. Users interact directly with training coaches and get personalized advice and training plans that easily fit their schedules. Besides, you business owners can organize online seminars and integrate the payment systems for people who visit the physical locations.
Nutrition and Dieting Apps
These applications are designed for people who want to lose weight, increase muscle mass or improve their lifestyle by redesigning their eating habits. A good app for nutrition control should be able to adjust to the user: keep records, set goals, and monitor progress. The best products usually include calorie calculators, recipes, nutritional advice, and social media integrations.
Wellness Apps
It’s a category of apps for non-standard fitness classes often accommodating more sophisticated tastes: yoga, meditation, sleep analysis, Asian fitness, mindfulness, habit builders, and other methods of improving lifestyles. Video, audio, and motivational content, manuals, reflections, and time tracking are essential for the best wellness apps.
Today, the concept of wellness takes a more comprehensive approach.
Practiqa is a habit tracker and coach based on behavioural psychology and personal motivation. The app helps people build and maintain new habits consciously with little effort.
Interactive Kyokushin Book is a detailed and interactive mobile assistant for karate self-learning. It provides users with guides, images, video lessons and personalised advice and uses a realistic 3D model to visualise move explanations.
Multi-Functional Apps
These are versatile solutions that combine exercise guides, detailed training statistics, nutrition advice, personal trainer recommendations, and paid gym memberships. Full-featured apps have impressive business potential — flexibility in monetization, ability to implement paid features, and increased audience. However, combining more functionality in one service increases development costs.
Fitness and Wellness App Features
How do you create a health and wellness app? Provided that you already have the concept, target audience and business goals, you need to focus on the set of features for your application. While narrow-niche solutions certainly have specific functionality, all fitness products share particular requirements.
- Login
Sign-in integrations through email, social media, and phone numbers make the entire registration and authentication process much easier and bring more user interaction with the product.
- User Profile
To get results, users need access to personal data, statistics, and analytics. An achievement system and dashboards keep them motivated. You can score bonus points for personalization user experience.
- User Activity Monitoring
It’s essential for evaluating results as well as setting and adjusting goals. This feature helps users collect and analyze data reflecting their progress. It’s also one of the main motivators, urging the customer to use the app and continue to exercise.
- Goals
Setting goals is as vital as tracking progress. Clear objectives help users stay engaged and motivated. The clever visual design makes the application more interesting and attractive.
- External Device Integration
Some fitness enthusiasts say that your app should support as many trackers as possible. Well, at least smartwatches and fitness trackers are a must. Provided the nature of such products, the data like heart rate, calories burned, exercise type, time, and intensity of physical activity are essential for users.
- Geolocation
Introducing this feature has almost endless potential. From creating walking, running, and cycling routes and tracking the distance to the nearby gym location or the list of healthy food shops and restaurants, you can provide your customers with extra functionality.
- Notifications and Reminders
People are busy and often skip their exercise or forget about their new nutrition routines. It makes them feel bad about themselves and their endeavors. A fully personalized system of push notifications and reminders with calendar integration helps users have better control over their practices.
- Payment Systems Integrations
Even if you intend to create a free product, you’ll need to introduce paid features to make a profit. Payment systems integrations must be seamless and provide various payment options to increase customer satisfaction and retention.
- App Security
Last but not least. Multi-factor authentication instead of passwords and security protocols for data storage are already the industry requirements. People share a lot of personal information in mobile apps.
Monetising a Fitness App
The ultimate goal of any business is to make a profit. However, choosing a monetizing model is a challenge: charging too much or making every feature paid will likely discourage customers from using your product. On the other hand, charging not enough won’t cover further development and solution maintenance. According to a target audience and financial objectives, there are three main ways to make money with a fitness app.
Freemium
It’s a combination of the words “free” and “premium”. The app is free to download and provides users with a basic feature set (also for free). The “premium” part usually includes connecting with a trainer who creates personalized training programs or getting an individual nutrition plan. Finding a balance is a catch. Your free basic version must be well-done and sufficient, yet encourage your customers to pay for extra features.
In-App Purchases
It’s a fitness app business model that allows you to sell goods and physical products on top of services. It can be sports nutrition, clothes, fitness trackers, equipment, souvenirs, skincare products, and other merchandise. You can also connect to business partners and integrate external online shops into your product for mutual benefit.
Advertising
This approach is as old as time but effective. It is possible to provide customers with extensive free features while earning on built-in ads. You can even make some features available after a user watches a video ad. There are many ways to connect advertising and also make it personalized.
Final Thoughts
The fitness community is growing. Today, sports are not just a fashion trend but a necessity. Changes in lifestyle, reduced activity, fatigue, irrational nutrition, and other factors affect a lot of people. On the other hand, these tendencies create the demand for health and wellness app ideas. Although the market competition is quite high, the recent trends reveal room for new successful products people need.
At Rocketech, we offer our Partners not only solid experience in health and fitness app development but also our business expertise in product growth strategies and reaching new markets. Do you have a wellness startup? Let’s create an outstanding product together. Contact us.