Health and Fitness App Development | Coherent Lab

In the last three years, health and fitness apps usage has grown 330%. Fitbit alone has 23.6 million monthly unique users. Isn’t that an eye-opener?

While we have an app for almost everything today, from consuming daily news to shopping for pets, from food delivery to ticket reservation, the most popular in the recent times undeniably are the health and fitness apps.

From tracking daily activities and keeping a count on your calorie consumption to analyzing sleep patterns and heart-rate, these apps are revolutionary in terms of making users aware of their health, which is often ignored especially in today’s age where lifestyles have changed drastically.

As per Statista, there were more than 37k health and fitness app on the Google Play Store till the first quarter of 2019.

Health and fitness app development is currently on the rise and it’s not nearing saturation anytime soon. Entrepreneurs are constantly upgrading capabilities of their apps to provide not only the best experience to their users but with more relevant data for better health tracking.

New entrepreneurs are also joining the bandwagon. If you are one of those planning to invest in health and fitness app development, then this guide is for you.

Steps to Follow While Engaging In Health and Fitness App Development

This guide takes you through the steps of building a professional health and fitness app. The process remains the same, while you can always tailor it according to your requirements.

1. Decide the type 

Broadly, there are three types of health and fitness apps:

1. Tracking apps: These apps are intended to track the daily activities of the users like steps taken, distance travelled, water intake, calories consumed, heart rate, etc. The sensors in the app are used to track kinetic movements. The data, thus, stored is displayed to the users in the form of insightful information, at times in the form of visuals.
2. Workout apps: These types of apps are referred to as instructing apps. You can think of them as home-based exercise apps. A set of exercises are provided to the users in addition to some training plans. Users can even choose to subscribe to specific trainers for their training manuals and workout routines. The apps collect activity data to provide personalized information to the users in the end.
3. Nutrition apps: These apps are aimed at monitoring your eating habits. You can keep a track of calorie count, know food item’s dietary value, set goals for yourself and keep a check on your nutrition. Moreover, these apps can be used for motivating users by sending them push notifications to meet their daily/weekly/monthly diet goals.

There are other sub-options as well like you can build an app dedicatedly for yoga lovers. A meditation app or an app to help depression patients can also be a good option. Decide where you want to invest.

2. Select a platform

Next step into the health and fitness app development is to select a platform. Choosing between the most popular ones, Android, iOS or Windows, can be daunting. Also, it would require some research.

You need to consider your target audience. Like if you want to launch a fitness app in India, opting for Android could prove to a wise choice, whereas if you talk about the US, users prefer iOS more in that part of the world.

Not just the region, but you need to perform deep audience research to identify your potential users and thus, the platform.

3. Identify your target audience

Identify your audience based on the type of app you want to develop, the region you want to target and their financial status, age and profession. Say, for example, if you decide to build a fitness tracking app, then your primary users would be from 25 years to 40 years. This is the age-range when people start to worry about their fitness and look for options to deal with it.

Researching and identifying your audience at an initial stage would make your fitness app development path easier than otherwise.

4. List down the most important features

Next step would be deciding the features list. Based on the type of app, features must be decided because features in a fitness tracking app would differ from the features included in a nutrition app.

The best way is to put everything on paper.

Once you pour out your thoughts on paper, brainstorm it with your peers, team members and others in your circle.

Don’t overload your app with features. Choose features wisely.

Remember that it’s not a one-time play. You need to constantly innovate to keep users engaged and encouraged. Rather than putting too much in the health and fitness app development at once, try to play in phases. With the release of a new update, you can append the features list. This would give users a reason to stay connected.

5. Set a budget

Not just for development, but you are required to set a budget for marketing and advertising. We have mentioned some of the important aspects to consider while deciding the health and fitness app development budget. Based on the following aspects you can have an idea of how much development budget you need to allocate.

1. App type
2. App platform
3. In-house development or outsourced
4. Features and their complexity
5. Set of requisites like app store fees and annual expenses

Next is the marketing & advertising budget. Considering how you plan to market your app and what channels (offline and online) you’d target will help you define a marketing budget for your app.  

6. Know the monetization strategies

It is better to plan in advance than fret later. So how do you plan to make money? There are multiple ways you can make most out of your fitness and health app. Some primary monetization schemes are in-app purchases, freemium scheme, subscription-based model, in-app advertising and paid app model.

There can be other ways like sponsored posts, product reviews and new launches that can help you make money. But these ways only come into the picture when your app reaches a certain milestone, maybe a million-downloads with fairly good active monthly users.

Development Timeline

An app development project is carried out in phases, with each phase having its timeline. Following phase bifurcation with the approximate number of hours can guide you.

• Analysis and documentation phase (40 to 60 hours)
• Prototype creation phase (40 to 60 hours)
• Design phase (60 to 80 hours)
• Development phase – frontend and backend (500 to 700 hours)
• Testing phase (80 to 100 hours)
• Maintenance phase (30 to 50 hours)

Health & Fitness App Development Cost Estimation 

So how much does it cost to build a health and fitness app? Well, an estimation can only be made after discussing your requirements. However, talking in general, a fitness app (standalone app either for iOS or Android) with an average set of features would cost anywhere between $15,000 and $30,000. A generic breakdown of the cost is given below.

1. Analysis and documentation phase (40 to 60 hours)
2. Prototype creation phase (40 to 60 hours)  

Points 1 & 2 combined – $1,500 to $2,000 

• Design phase (60 to 80 hours) – $2,000 to $3,000
• Development phase – frontend and backend (500 to 700 hours) – $10,000 to $20,000
• Testing phase (80 to 100 hours) – $2,000 to $4,000
• Maintenance phase (30 to 50 hours) – $1,000 to $2,000

On an average US-based developers charge $50 to $250 per hour, while developers based in India charge $15 to $80 per hour for the same task. The European developers, on the other hand, ask for $30 to $150 per hour for a development task.

Final words

By now we assume that you know building a health and fitness mobile app is no joke. Only professionals with technical skills, subject knowledge and good communication can achieve the feat.

A successful app requires vigorous planning and seamless execution. For that, you require assistance from an experienced health and fitness app development company. Get in touch with such a company to see your ideas transform into reality.

Note- Don’t forget to check the company’s portfolio, clients, testimonials, technology stack and pricing models.