Fitness App Development Guide: Choosing the Right Type and Functionality

25.10.2018

How To Make A Fitness App PORTFOLIO

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Different types of fitness apps Basic fitness app features Fitness app development tren

FITNESS APP DEVELOPMENT GUIDE: CHOOSING THE RIGHT TYPE AND FUNCTIONALITY

Step-by-step-development gu

19 april 2018

 104

 13 min

With a flourishing mobile development industry, every smartphone user can do whatever he wants from the comfort of his home. The lack of a free time to attend foreign language classes or to go to the gym is not a problem anymore because everything you need is a dedicated mobile application. Literally, your phone is your teacher, doctor, and coach at the same time. Surprisingly, but the last two smartphones embodiments have become incredibly requested recently. Since that, we've decided to focus on them and find out what to do if you want to create your own fitness application. So ready! Steady! Go!

Fitness application: How to develop your first one?

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There are millions of fitness apps on app stores different fitness app development companies, yet, not all of them are popular. If you plan to create fitness app, let's consider the apps which customers love and use the most according to their types:

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1. High-intensity interval training HIIT is a kind of applications which offer customers short period training workout (usually 10 minutes long) with lots of high intensive exercises. Such exercises require plenty of energy and torches lots of calories in a short time. HIIT app exercises are very effective but they require a certain level of training from a customer. It isn't safe to use this app to a person who has just started doing sport. Remember it when you build your own fitness app. One of the brightest examples of a HIIT program is an Android fitness app Tabata HIIT Interval Timer.

Tabata HIIT Interval Timer - fitness app

2. Diet and nutrition app Such apps help users track the number of consumed calories. A user chooses a product he ate in the list, indicates its weight and gets a precise number of calories. In such a mode, the person can see how many calories he consumed during the day, control, loose or gain some kilos. If you want to build a ﬁtness app of this type, you need to know that these applications usually have a barcode scanner which is extremely helpful when a customer is doing shopping.

Discover a story of the world's biggest gym directory app development from Cleveroad!

All these features you can ﬁnd in the Calorie Counter - My Fitness Pal app. It's one of the most popular diet and nutrition apps on Google Play store. The app is free and it claims that 88% of its users (who visit this app 7 times a week) has lost some weight. If you want to know how to develop a ﬁtness app like My Fitness Pal, our specialists at Cleveroad will give you a hint.

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My fitness Pal - app to count calories

3. Activity tracking app These of apps can cover one specific kind of sport or a lot of them. For instance, there are apps for cyclists, runners, or exercise trackers, and so on. Usually, they also cover person's movements as well. Like tracking the distance travelled, number of steps taken or climbed, burned calories and some other metrics. While considering how to make a fitness app to track users' activities, don't forget that these apps work much better if they are compatible with wearable devices. It can be a smartwatch or fitbit, for instance. These gadgets significantly extend the functionality of a fitness application. One of the great motivation tricks which activity tracking app often uses is social integration. For example, Nike Run Club allows customers to share their progress in a number of various social networks and, what is even more helpful, to find a companion for a user in his area for joint exercises. You also need to add such social features when you make your own fitness app. It's always great to train with friends or other fitness enthusiasts. In case you don't even imagine how to make fitness app, you'd better look at one of such programs and download Runtastic Running and Fitness Tracker. The app easily tracks users' movements with the help of GPS. It's also compatible with different fitness wearables.

How we developed the world's bi directory app

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Runtastic Running and Fitness Tracker app

Simple guide to a meditation app development

4. Personal trainer or studio app These are the apps created specifically for personal needs of a particular trainer or a fitness studio and their customers. Such programs can have very different functionality. Some of them can work like an organizer, where a user arranges or cancels his training. They can also have a newsfeed where a studio or a trainer post some news. Live streaming is one of the most required features for personal trainer apps. Mind it if you analyze how to create your own fitness app. A user arranges a session with a trainer and can train anywhere. Using a live streaming feature, a trainer can see how a customer does an exercise and the user sees the trainer which explains how to do one exercise or another.

5. Yoga and meditation app The yoga and meditation apps usually have a range of sessions which are classiﬁed according to a level of a user. A person chooses his level and a program he or she wants to get. Such sessions are usually daily. Which means these apps have high retention rate! Many apps have a reminder option. They inform a user about a session at a speciﬁc time every day and users never forget of a training! A classical example of such an app is Daily Yoga app

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Daily Yoga app

To satisfy the needs of modern customers, the majority of popular apps are trying to combine several types in one. For instance activity tracker, or HIIT apps can also have a calories calculator. Or a yoga app can oﬀer services of a personal trainer.

Be careful! Meditation apps have lots of peculiarities. Check our comprehensive guide to a meditation app development before you start a project!

Basic fitness app features All the apps are different and can provide a user with various functionality set. Yet, we offer you a list of the most basic features you can use to form a base when you make a fitness app for your business:

MVP features of your fitness application

Log in

If you check out how to create ﬁtness app, remember that

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health and ﬁtness app development demands a high level of personalization. That's why there should be an option to create a personal account. Various services either suggest logging in through social networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, etc. or signing up via email. Your future application should give users both opportunities, though. With the personal account created, all the data on the users' progress won't be stored on a single device solely.

Social integration

First of all, the information stored on a social network account will be synchronized with the one for a ﬁtness app. On the other hand, authorizing in an application via Facebook makes the search for friends much easier; thus, the application can combine some functions of a social network, the news feed, and do its main job, tracking. Many apps also allow users to publish their results on Facebook alongside the screenshots of routes they ran/cycled/walked and upload photos made during the workout; the same will be reﬂected in the app feed line.

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Still don't know where to ﬁnd investors for your project? Here's an article for you stuﬀed with tons of useful tips and hints!

Personal account

There are several types of data that should be added manually at the start, the rest can be conﬁgured in settings. You should also suggest adding a proﬁle photo by either taking a new photo or downloading it from a library. And don't forget to enable users to choose between pounds and kilograms, if it comes to the users' weight, and between feet and meters if it comes to the users' height. Be international!

Device connectivity

It's very important for a ﬁt app to be compatible with as many trackers as possible. Fortunately, wearable producers and mobile platforms give mobile ﬁtness app developers such a chance.

User activity tracking

Actually, this point is deeply connected to the previous one. Traditional ﬁtness tracking applications are focused on activities like walking, running, cycling, and even swimming sometimes. The application normally shows a number calories burnt, steps made, miles run, time taken, and so on and so forth. You can use both, tracking with the help of a ﬁtbit or using sensors of a smartphone.

Geolocation

With this feature, a user can build walking routes, track his current position, and record workouts. Have you seen those recorded routes on Strava? No? Then you obviously should.

Learn more about other beneﬁts a geolocation feature can bring to your project and your business in our short video!

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Why Should You Integrate Geolocation into an App?

Notifications

Sport is about regularity. A few missed workouts and you will lose your shape. That's why reminders are very important when it comes to ﬁtness and health app development. Although, they should not be annoying. In case the user is in poor health or very busy at the moment, he should be capable of adjusting them. Time and frequency are the main variables here.

Target setting

It's one of the most recognizable features of activity tracking apps. Let users plan ahead and set achievable (maybe not) goals, they should constantly move forward and develop.

Workouts

These may diﬀer depending on the type of an app. Most of the tracking apps allow creating your own workout or choose among oﬀered ones.

Settings

Stuﬀ this menu with as many points as you want. The most important thing is to make an app convenient and customizable. On the other hand, when adding a lot of settings, don't forget that the menu has to be comprehensive!

While working on your idea, don't forget that the key to success of any ﬁtness or healthcare app development is users' engagement and motivation. And Visualization is an important part of this process. That is why you need to provide a user with detailed analytics and reports.

Fitness app trends or how to make your app better When you are working on your project and learn how to make your own ﬁtness app, don't forget to include the trending elements which will help your app to stand out from the others and attract more users. Here are the latest trends customers would appreciate in your program:

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How to build a fitness app and make it viral

1 Gamification and motivation One of the main reasons why people abandon training and, your app as a sequence, is a loss of motivation. Why? Because all exercises are usually hard and require lots of eﬀorts. That is why you need to make training with your app very interesting and entertaining. What you can do. Think how to create a ﬁtness app and make it look and feel like a game. Add rewards and elements of a contest into your app. Give scores or points which a user can exchange into something real and attractive. Here are some examples for you:

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Zombies run is a running app. While running a user hears a story and dives into a world infested with zombies and survivals. A user is more engaged in listening and forgets about fatigue. Charity Miles is an app where every mile a user walks, runs or cycles can help save someone's life. How does it work? A user chooses one of 40 charities where he wants to donate his miles and starts moving. So far, the campaign has earned $2.5 million. Sounds like a great motivation.

2 Social Media Nowadays, when a person does something, he wants to tell everyone about it. And you should consider this fact as a huge possibility for your business. What you can do. Add as many social media features into your app as you can. The more you add the more free advertising you'll get. Let your users share their results in social networks, invite friends or set a competition via these services. That's why you need to create pages in social networks and communities around your app where you can gather people, engage and encourage them.

Find out how to protect your idea from being cloned or copied on every development stage and what documents can help you with it!

3 Virtual reality What can be more fun than being a part of a video game? That's what VR does, it places a user in an absolutely another world or a nice and peaceful place where he wants to be right now. It is very exciting and never gets boring.

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What you can do. Here we need to mention that this can not be an additional feature to an existing app. If you want to develop a ﬁtness app with VR functionality, you have to understand that such a project requires VR headsets and special environment where a user can't harm himself or others. That is why such products are usually created in a partnership with various companies.

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How to create a fitness app We crafted a checklist which you can use to make a ﬁtness app. Follow these steps:

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Step 1. Choose a type of fitness app you want to create. Step 2. Make an analysis of the fitness app market. Step 3. Write a competitive analysis. Step 4. Pick the features for MVP to create a fitness app. Step 5. Make sure your app's functionality allows it to stand out. Step 6. Find a reliable developer or software development company for your project. Step 7. Get a rough and then detailed estimate of your fitness app. Step 8. Set a budget. Step 9. Take part in the planning stage of your fitness app development. Step 10. Check the app's readiness by testing its demo at the end of every sprint. Step 11. Let your developers publish the app to the app store(s). Step 12. Get the source code of your application. Step 13. Keep track of metrics and create a promotion strategy. Step 14. Update it on a regular basis and add new features.

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Now, let's dive into details regarding your cooperation with the software developer. Once you've decided what type of a fitness and healthcare app you want to create, you will need to find and contact a reliable and experienced fitness app developer which will deliver your app wasting no time. To make it easier for your understanding, we've divided the whole development process into stages.

How to create your own fitness app

Rough estimation

During this stage, you need to tell us about a ﬁtness app you want to create, features you think should be present there and some other details on the project. After this period, we provide you with the cost and time evaluation of your app. These numbers would be approximate. The ﬁnal

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estimation can be given when we prepare technical documentation.

Planning stage

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This is the stage when we create the full set of the required documentation and materials, including a list of requirements, users stories, wireframes, basic design and a prototype of your future app. When these docs are ready, we can tell you the exact sum and time needed to develop a ﬁtness app for you.

Read our outsourcing guide for customers where we've described the process of our collaboration and ﬁnd out more about each stage!

Development and testing

In Cleveroad we rely on Agile software development methodology and on the latest DevOps principles which allow us to develop and test code almost at the same time. In such a way, we save your time and money, of course.

Release and post-release support

We understand how important it is to support the product right after the release. That's why all our customers get a FREE product support within 30 days after the release.

We know that the first question that concerns you the post is the price of your application. Yet, due to a variety of app types and features which you can include there, it's difficult to tell you the cost. That is why we offer you to try our absolutely FREE app cost calculator! Here, you can indicate all the features you want to add to your own fitness app and get the estimation within a few seconds! Each app development requires a thorough planning process and deep technical knowledge. The team of Cleveroad knows how to create your fitness app fast and make it unique and appealing. If you are ready to implement an idea into reality, contact our managers anytime you need!

Rate this article:       (445 ratings, average: 4.82 out of 5) Cleveroad.com > Blog > Client Guides > Fitness app

Fitness App Development Guide: Choosing the Right Type and Functionality

Published on Oct 25, 2018

Alexey Porubay

With a flourishing mobile development industry, every smartphone user can do whatever he wants from the comfort of his home. The lack of a free time to attend foreign language classes or to go to the gym is not a problem anymore because everything you need is a dedicated mobile application. Literally, your phone is your teacher, doctor, and coach at the same time. Surprisingly, but the last two smartphones embodiments have become incredibly requested recently. Since that, we've decided to focus on them and find out what to do if you want to create your own fitness application. So ready! Steady! Go! Fitness application: How to develop your first one? Different types of fitness apps There are millions of fitness apps on app stores different fitness app development companies, yet, not all of them are popular. If you plan to create fitness app, let's consider the apps which customers love and use the most according to their types: 1. High-intensity interval training HIIT is a kind of applications which offer cu