How to Create a Fitness App from Scratch

Digitalization rules the world. You can find anything on the screen of the black square in your pocket. Even solutions on how to become more successful, happier, earn more money, know more things, be stronger and healthier. 

Self-improvement is in human nature, and now it becomes easier cause your phone has access to everything. People just take the phone, install the application and do something even without going somewhere: even training with a professional coach with your phone, thankfully to fitness apps. Let’s get dipper to this lifestyle solution.

Fitness App: Do People Actually Use It?

Why would you, as an owner, spend resources on such an app? Who’s gonna download it? Statistics said that consumers spent $1.4 billion on well-being apps in 2019. 

The Market Share:

Let’s find out where fitness and health apps are: what is on the top at big markets. Strange to see, but the percentage of the market share does not depend on this list. In the App Store it stands at 3.31% point, but Google play has 23.17% of the market share.

The Income from Fitness App

Thanks to Fitness apps, people buy sports apparel in 2019 more often. The global statistics says that $181 billion was spent on it. And only 0.55% of this sum on the strength equipment. 

Marketers predict that in 2025 this sum will increase by 1%, which means that the sum spended on sports apparel will increase twice.

The Users

Users are accurate to their app, and almost 100% have only one fitness app on their phone. Third part of these users open the app twice a week and the others over 40 times a month.

Still have doubts after all these arguments? Well, we have more of them: Do fitness apps are divided by types? What type to choose? What features does this or that type have? Answer for these questions along with the other useful information listed below.

Types of Fitness Apps 

As every lifestyle feature, fitness apps have their types. They are developed by different companies, have their design and different unique or must-have features, but why are some of them on the top of the lists and others were downloaded only by app’s developers and their moms? 

So let’s view what types of applications are loved by customers and used the most. Historically, there is no strict division for the fitness app types, but they are divided into the next types. 

They are favorite applications for fitness enthusiasts. These apps offer their customers an interval method of training or a strategy of cardiovascular exercise. It means that during the workout user is going through several periods of intensive training. 

Training is beginning from intensive anaerobic exercise then follows the less-intense period when the user can take a rest. Such a process is repeated until the customer becomes so exhausted that he couldn’t continue.

Before building this kind of app, you should remember: for newbies, it will be dangerous to use such an application. If you want to build an application for people of all ages and abilities, this type is not for you.

A barcode scanner is very useful for applications of this type because it is very useful for customers during the shopping process, so you should remember about this feature if you want to build an application of such type.   

Examples:

Such apps have the logs with physical activity of the user during the twenty-four hours. This app marks in the log the info about distance, speed, the number of stairs, calories, steps, sleeping hours, etc. This info is arranged into routes saved on the map, different colorful charts and diagrams, also this app saves the info about body measurement.

One of the coolest apps that allow us to manage and store all this information called Health (developed by Apple). It consolidates all data from the connected devices and previously used apps and contains the next features:

Such an application creates for customers who want to train with personal trainers or studio. The functionality of this app can be very different. Some of them help trainers to schedule personal training and some work like a live organizer where customers can book or cancel the training. 

Also, these apps contain feeds where trainers or studios can post videos, workouts, tips or other news.

This type of app is designed to help people to control anxiety, reduce stress, improve sleep, focus more, control pain, etc. Such an app is intended to develop life-changing habits, like training the mind to be more focused or redirect the thoughts.

Example: Calm

The name of this app is talked about peace. Right after opening, you are invited to complete the meditation called Daily Calm or choose the meditation that is designed specifically for your needs. 

Fitness App Creation. Step by Step Guide

There are 5 monetization business models that can receive a profit: in-app purchases, freemium, sponsored content, ads and paid app.

Each app contains some basic functionality along with a set of unique features. To create the fitness app you should think about the next set of ideas that exist in all fitness applications.

Now, when we know what we want, let’s see what is going to be inside of it:

The features for fitness app can be, but is not limited to:

  • Guided exercises
  • Videos with tips
  • Plan and workout routine
  • Schedule
  • Personal training “one-to-one”
  • Live stream “one-to-many”
  • Registration
  • News feed
  • Food base
  • Login and registration 

Everything depends on market needs, statistics and your imagination.

One of the important steps in fitness app creation is to hire a development team to transform a business idea into a working application. At this step, you should remember that in different countries developers, have different hourly rates, e.g:

Then follows the inception phase.

Each project starts with the research phase. On this step, the development team along with you will do the following:

This phase proceeds from 4 to 6 weeks and includes UI/UX design creation. Also, there will be created visual prototyping of the application and it helps you to imagine the final product.

Along with the inception phase starts the phase where a technical expert creates the documents with the technical specification (backlog) based on your ideas, criteria, and requirements. Docs needed for developers to start the work under apps included, but not limited to, backlog, use cases, estimates, platforms description. Therefore, there is a lot of other information. 

Hiring the development team won’t be beneficial without Project Managers. They are doing developers’ work profitable and give them docs to view and make some changes according to your vision of some specific feature. 

If you don’t have a clue how to implement your idea into reality then contact experts. The hired software team can give you advice on how to do it in the best way.

It usually has difficulties explaining what design step consists of. But we will do it with the example of our experience: our ChallengeSoft design team needs approximately 1 month, it means 80 hours, to create the beautiful, outstanding, modern design for your apps. Our designers create the design along with the UI/UX consultant so after 1 month you will receive mobile screens where both UI and UX parts will be implemented. 

Basically, in reality, the time for design and its cost depend on such aspects as standard features and complexity of the unique features you want to use in your product.

This phase is about the team’s size that will develop the app. It depends on the functionality you request to release for the last version of the product.  

For app development for both Android and iOS, your team should have at least 3 devs: the backend, iOS, and Android. Keep in mind that the development stage is very interactive. 

We recommend you to be ready to receive many questions the development team will have. It all is unique as well as partnership depends that owner and team had built:

Bug Fixing and testing also take a moment and effort. Our QAs not only do the testing of code but also create the logic for gaps, along with checking of the whole product and its components that users will find useful and functional works.

We have 9 testing stages for fitness app:

  1. Testing of the installation process.  When the application is available, we start the installation testing. The aim is to understand can users easily install and delete the fitness app. Besides, our testers should ensure that the app data is also removed along with the application.
  2. Testing on target devices and OS. Our testers should ensure the app function as described in the technical documentation across all the mobile gadgets and different versions of operating systems. We use not only simulators but also real devices with various major OS installed.
  3. Testing of UI/UX . When we test the user interface (UI) and the user experience (UX) we want to understand that the app is user-friendly and they use it without some additional efforts. It is crucial to understand that the interface is perceptive, easy-to-operate, synchronized with users’ actions and corresponds to all accepted by the industry standards.
  4. Functionality testing. This testing specifies the behavior of different functions across the app. Includes testing user interaction to understand all parts, fields, tabs, switches, buttons are working as needed. The app should work properly according to the specific industry standards, basic app recommendations and notes described in the technical requirement. This testing is divided into manual testing when testers do everything manuals and automatization testing, where some special script does the job. It helps to indicate crashes, freezes, gaps in logic and bugs in behavior.
  5. Interrupt testing . Testing of calls, SMS, messages from the various applications, push notifications, etc., during app usage. Testers should ascertain that the app can handle a wide range of interruptions and work properly avoiding UI defects, crashes of the app and glitches of various kinds. 
  6. Testing of data network. Network connectivity is the indefeasible part of the mobile app. Our testers simulate the cellular network for bandwidth affairs and that helps to find bottlenecks and gaps with connectivity. App should work correctly with different network speeds.
  7. Performance testing. Testing of the performance helps to find leaks in memory, time of the response and app performance. It helps to understand which load can withstand the app. The objective is to make sure that the app performs in the best way possible under the different high loads of these circumstances.
  8. High load testing . Our specialists should make sure that the app works well under high stress and maximum loads. The aim is to guarantee that the high numbers of users can access and use the app without problems, such as glitching or freezing. 
  9. Security testing . It includes gathering info about the app and finding the threats and vulnerabilities. Our testers use different analysis’ types to check the source code. They should check the network functions and the security of sent requests.

After the testing, the product got its delivering process (in our case word “product” is equal to the “fitness app” to the end-user). We carry the app for you, gain and resolve your feedback. Theh, when we almost reach the finish line, at the end of this process, we release the app in the Google Play or App Store. 

It turns out to be very useful: create some closed alpha and/or beta testing before releasing, because if beta testers can share their thoughts on how they want to improve or change the product to make it engaging for each person. 

Basically, customers can virtually act as a QA department, each has his own inimitable experience and can bring it to the app. Then during some discussion period, approx. 2 months, we gather, handle and fix the feedback from your clients. E.g. some bugs or gaps we can’t catch when debugging the product. 

When gathering feedback, you as a potential customer can help us. There are a lot of different channels you can receive feedback from your users. These channels can be viewed from different social medias like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. However, it could be comments’ sections on Google Play or App Store, and even the emails to Help center. Some people also can leave the comments after private training, under the workouts, and in the newsfeed. 

You should be ready that feedback can be different, from positive praise to negative comments about the service you receive. Some feedback requires a quick response and some should stay without it at all. 

There are 4 main stages in a process of feedback handling:

  1. Receive and record the feedback
  2. Assess the feedback
  3. Investigate the feedback
  4. Respond and record the feedback

Some companies even have a special documentation with a description of how to react to different feedback types.

On the 10th step, we finally got to one of the important questions: how to avoid crashes of your apps and have an up-to-date application? The answer is simple: continuing growing, adding additional features for each release and constant monitoring of the market trends and future technologies updates. 

As a part of a longstanding partnership, we can offer different features for future improvement, based on analytics or user’s feedback, and our help with issues that can occur as a result of the consistent evolution of the technologies. Therefore, we can help you with planning new features and future releases. Besides, we can give you regular reports about changes and updates in technologies we used in the product. 

Fitness App’s Conception

It’s hard to find something more challenging than developing a fitness app. We as ChallengeSoft company know what to do with challenges: to make everything useful for users and unique for this specific market. Users want an opportunity to have a custom workout or plan. Meantime, it should offer the daily fitness routine developed by specialists. 

So if you have an idea but haven’t experience – do implement it in life with help. We at ChallengeSoft create great apps by transforming the vision into reality. Contact us or send us an email at team@challengesoft.tech

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