Today, It is a dream of every person to stay fit and have a healthy diet. As a result, they are connecting with different types of fitness apps. These fitness apps teach the users different types of exercises in innovative methods.  Consequently, creating fitness awareness among their users. Therefore, people are becoming more devoted to their fitness. You will find several fitness apps that have been launched in the market to motivate users to do more exercise. These fitness apps enabled with integration features to connect with different devices. They have inbuilt sensors that allow users to learn physical activities, eating habits, sleeping patterns, and guide the users for better exercise.

If you are trying to launch a fitness mobile app, you have to know several things about app design, app development, testing, launching, and support. You have to follow a process to build a fitness app. As a leading app development company in Pennsylvania, we have listed a step by step guide for developing a fitness app:

Choose Your App Type

Currently, there are numerous types of fitness apps available on the app store. They are focusing on different aspects of fitness. Firstly, when you proceed to develop your fitness app, you should determine what type of fitness app you want to build. Your fitness app can be a running app, nutrition app, workout app, sleeping app, a meditation app, or any other app. Based on your app type, you can add unique features and target your audience. When you focus on your key audience, you can better take care of their needs and wants. As a result, you can easily market your fitness app and make it a success.

Analyze Competitor’s Apps

The mobile app market is highly competitive, you will find several fitness apps with various objectives. To grow in such a competitive market, you need to identify and evaluate your current competitors. Your analysis should cover the strengths and drawbacks of your competitors. Analyzing through existing apps can help you to develop strategies to overcome the market challenges to make your app a success. You can adopt their strength and initiate steps to avoid their drawbacks in your fitness app. With the analysis, you can identify the key factors that need a focus that can be related to the development, marketing, and launching of an app.

Write down your Feature List

After the competitor analysis, you need to finalize the key features of your fitness app. Writing down the feature list will help you to have a better understanding of your concept and idea. You can share it with your friends and family to get feedback and input. Based on their feedback, you can transform the features to fulfill the requirements of your initial users. While finalizing your app requirements, you should identify key features that will make your app more appealing for the users. This is because attractive features will engage users with your fitness app. They will be enabled to spend quality time on your fitness app and share it with other people.

Know About Healthcare Compliance

Before you get your fitness app developed, you need to know about healthcare compliance. Depending upon your app type, you may need it to be HIPAA compliant. Why your app needs HIPAA compliance, what is the need for HIPAA compliance? The answer behind these questions is to safeguard and protect the medical information of the user. They are set of compliance for the protection of the health information of the users. If you are saving sensitive data of the users, your fitness app may need to be HIPAA compliant. HIPAA is incorporated with a mission to safeguard and protect the medical information of app users. The HIPAA compliance app provides the user with the confidence that the personal data is safe. There are presently much how can help you in the development with HIPAA compliance mobile app.

Create Stunning Designs

Designs are a crucial part of a mobile app. An attractive design will make your fitness app more appealing and engage app users. As a result, there will increase the retention rate of your fitness app. Therefore, when designing your app, you have to focus on building a user-friendly design. Try to adopt simple and basic designs rather than the complex. Firstly, you should start designing by preparing wire-frames/prototypes of your app. With the help of sketches, you will get an overview of the performance of your fitness app. You can easily prepare the user flow of your app. The fonts, colors, and other design elements need to be considered for an attractive design. You should hire a professional designer or consult with your app development company. They might charge a higher price for their services but will provide a designed app within time.

Hire an App Development Company

When you have finalized the core feature and function of your app, you need to talk to healthcare app development companies to discuss project details and get a detailed proposal for development. You should hire a development company as they are a full package of services. They will provide you with the front end as well as back end services.  You can find several development companies online and having head offices in your city. Based on, their reviews and experience, you can shortlist atleast 5 to 7 companies. You can consult with your friends, family, or other known people. They can provide you with the lead of the development company.

When you have shortlisted companies ask for their quotation regarding the pricing, duration, and experience. You should cross-check the experience and work efficiency with  their past and present clients. This is because you need to make sure that the relevant information is correct. We suggest you hire a development company with at-least 8+  years of experience. The experience of a developer can vary your app development cost. At the initial stage, you can hire a company with 4 to 5 years of experience that can ask you about $50 to $70 per hour. On the other hand, developers with 6+ years of experience can ask for about $65 to $80 per hour.

Get a Minimum Viable Product Ready

Before launching the full-featured version of your app, you should get a minimum viable product (MVP). MVP app includes the core features of your fitness app. At the initial stage, different types of users will connect to your app and avail app services. Enable the users to share their experience with the fit app. Their feedback can be either positive or negative. Based on their feedback, you can identify the effectiveness and performance of your app. If you negative feedback, you should carry the necessary modifications in your app to make it more appealing and engaging. Developing MVP (Minimum viable product) will cost you less and will be ready in about one and a half months. With the help of the MVP model of your app and the user experience, you can easily get funding from investors.

Build a Full Version with Innovative Features

Being a fitness freak, people try new and innovative apps to learn new exercises. Therefore, there is a need to add new and innovative features to your fitness app. You can add visual effects of the right manner to perform the exercises along with a proper diet plan for the users. Online training programs can also be made available to the user and to resolve the queries with relation to exercise or the form of performing it or regarding the diet. This innovation will help your fitness app to engage the users and stay connected.

App Marketing & App Store Optimization

After the launch, the next step is the marketing of your fitness app. This is because proper marketing practices bring your app in front of your audience. There are different types of marketing practices, such as SEO marketing, ASO (app store marketing), social media marketing, and others. You can adapt them according to your app requirements. You can hire an in-house or remote business team for the marketing of your fitness app. The hiring of a marketing company can cost you about $100 per hour. On the other hand, experienced freelancers can charge about $50 per hour. If you are looking for professional, then they will charge you near about $35 to $45 per hour, according to their years of experience.

Conclusion

The fitness apps are very popular on the app stores. This is because they act like a coach, motivator, monitor while the person is trying to focus on the fitness activity. They should serve the unique purpose of fitness: calorie burning, running, walking, workouts, sleep, eating, mental fitness, motivation or any other specific us. While you work on developing a fitness app, you should follow the process of defining requirements, getting a cost estimate, hiring an app developer, building an MVP, launching and marketing. All these require time and money, make sure you have allocated both.

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    Piyush Jain

    Piyush Jain is the CEO and Founder of Simpalm. He leads the business and engineering team to build the mobile and web product solution for clients. He loves to write thought leadership articles on IoT, Mobile, Blockchain, BigData, Web and other software technologies.