An Ultimate Guide to Fitness Tracking App Development

In the USA, one in every three Americans uses wearable devices to track their fitness. Fitness tracking apps are providing users with ample benefits, making them highly popular all around the world.

The scenario of popularity of wearable devices started right in 2012 with the first Fitbit, followed by the Apple Watch in 2014. Since then, users have highly anticipated the fitness tracking IoT devices, which easily sync with their fitness tracking apps, providing valuable insights.

Globally, there are more than 30% of people who are actively willing to pay for their fitness and exercise applications. Fitness tracking apps are helping them combat obesity, which is one of the most critical fitness issues. Due to the benefits that fitness tracking apps offer, the demand for fitness tracking app development has increased, which is a great sign.

So, how do you build a fitness tracking application if you have a startup idea? We will cover your query in in-depth detail in this article. But first, let us start by understanding how fitness tracking apps boost the fitness performance of users.

How Do Fitness Tracking Apps Boost The Fitness Performance Of Users?

Do you know that the fitness app industry is valued at $1.54 billion (Grand View Research)? The increasing downloads and subscriptions are further adding numbers to this industry in the upcoming years. It is all because of the improved fitness performance it offers its users. Let us see some pointers associated with how fitness tracking apps improve the fitness performance of users.

Progress Monitoring

Users love to see what they have achieved through their workout sessions. And, when a wearable device collects the information and sends it to your fitness tracking application, they can efficiently monitor it. Right from how many miles of running sessions they have covered to what time was taken, it can let them monitor their progress efficiently.

Improvement Tips

With the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence in mobile applications fitness apps continuously track the data. Not only do they track it, but they also analyse the data and frame possible tips for users about how they can enhance their fitness performance. Users regularly get tips to cover the areas where they are falling short in their workout sessions.

Diet Chart Preparation

There is a popular saying that you build muscles in the kitchen, not in the gym. In the gym, you just train yourself, but the proportion of fitness is decided by your meals. This is true. And, with fitness tracking application development, you can offer your users a personalized diet chart. This will further help them improve their overall fitness performance. As also said, good food keeps your body in optimum condition.

Healthy Competition

Another key benefit of fitness tracking applications is healthy competition. A competition helps users beat their own performance with the goal of competing with others. In the competition, they do not realise that they have pushed their limits and improved their overall fitness performance. Further, engaging in-app communities further keeps the users inspired to keep pushing their fitness level.

Read Also: Mental Healthcare App Development Guide: Market Need, Popularity, Features, Cost

How Can You Build A Fitness Tracking Application (Start To Finish)?

It is finally time to move the core of our article. How do you create your own fitness tracking app? With a decade of experience as a top-rated healthcare app development company in the USA, we will guide you through the entire process in six steps thoroughly so that you can kickstart your project right away.

Step 1: Understanding The Fitness Needs Of Users And Defining Goals

The process of app development is not all about programming. It starts with you! How can you consult your digital transformation agency until you have enough solid research and blueprints for your idea? The better you understand your users, the more chances there are for your app idea to achieve success.

So, how do you do it? Do not worry; this article has in-depth information for your fitness application development needs. Here is how you can understand user needs and goals effectively.

Identify The Target Audience

You must identify who can be a prospect for your business. The target audience identification consists of two important elements: demographics and preferences. Demographics include location, age, gender, employment, and income. When you have this information, you can identify their preferences and target audience through your campaigns. This whole process is known as market research.

Understand Common Pain Points And Desired Features.

Once you identify your target audience, you must further dig in to identify the pain points. What problems are the users facing with the current fitness tracking applications? What is lagging in those applications? Because if you just copy and paste the ideas, then it will not work. Go out to the market! Take the feedback of users and gather the features they desire in fitness apps.

The Primary Goals Of Your Fitness Tracking Application

Now, you have to rough-draft the blueprints of your own app before planning its final blueprint that you can lay out to your mobile app development company in USA or globally.

You must be clear with your purpose!

• What do you want to solve with your fitness tracking application for users?
• What are the key features of healthcare app that will be unique?
• What are the milestones that you set to keep your app idea sustainable?

Once you are clear with the above-mentioned bullet points, you can have your primary goals set up to move further.

Step 2: Planning and Designing Your Fitness Tracking App

Planning your fitness application plays a key role in establishing a development roadmap and timeline. With properly defined timelines, you reduce the risk of delays and can make the resources better through planning meetings with your fitness development team.

And designing at this stage helps you define the proper wireframes for your application. You can visualise your app’s interface in detail before sending it to the design team. Let us break down the planning and design of your fitness tracking application.

Finalise The Core Features And Functionalities.

In step 1, we talked about the planning of features and functionalities. In that stage, you will get to explore several elements that you have to filter here. Not every feature and functionality will be of use to your targeted audience. In this step, you will finalise your core features and functionalities.

Of course, you must give basic features to your users. But filter out the unique features you have gathered. If you go for offering so many features and functionalities, you might diminish the user experience.

Being straightforward, “offer core features and functionalities that your user’s desire combines with your unique idea and primary purpose.”

Creating Wireframes And Mock-Ups To Visualise The App’s User Interface

How about the visuals? The world is all about the visuals, and users love using fitness apps that have great user interfaces. But you do have to plan how your application will look to improve the user experience of it.

To prepare wireframes and mock-ups of your fitness tracking application, you can follow the below process:

• Map the user flow of your application (with the number of screens).
• Sketch mobile frames and see how each of your screens will look.
• Determine the layout of pop-ups and animations.

If you have some knowledge about designing tools, you can use UI/UX designing tools for mock-ups like Adobe XD and Figma. In case you are not well-versed in a design tool and still want to prepare digital mock-ups, you can hire dedicated designers and achieve what you want.

Establishing A Development Roadmap And Timeline

How about product management? How are you going to manage your product while it is in the development phase? Well, this is why you must create a good product road map. Do you know how an effective product looks? It should present a visual overview of the timeline and goals of your fitness tracking application. It also has a long-term direction associated with your product. So, how do you create a product roadmap? Here are the things that you should keep in mind with the goal of building an effective product roadmap.

• Assemble the product scope, objectives, features and functionalities, tasks, and milestones.
• Identify the roadmap timeline for your product. The timeline should be enough for a development team to complete their product.
• Use tools like Google Calendar to plan your product road map.

Keep in mind that product road maps are a subject to discuss with your respective product manager in the fitness app development team. It is possible that they alter it to deliver you a better product.

Step 3: Fitness Tracking Application Development

So, here comes the core of your fitness tracking app—the development part. Here, you have to decide on your development platform, decide your technology stack  and stay connected with your fitness app developers. Let us take a deep dive into building a fitness tracker application to improve fitness performance in users.

Picking The Right Tech Stack

If you have planned a tech stack for fitness app development in the planning phase, then you are good to go. However, if you have not planned it before, this is the phase where you must decide. The first thing that you must decide is your platform. And fitness enthusiasts are using two of the platforms: Android and iOS.

Let us make it simpler for you! Android is best if you want to target the South Asian market or a large consumer base. Pick iOS if you want to target people from the USA since 50% of people are using iPhones there. Well, you can opt for cross-platform app development if you want to target both platforms and go for a big business model. However, the cost of mobile app development varies from platform to platform.

But the tech stack does not end up here. You can also suggest technologies to your app development partner. For example, if you think that React Native is better than Flutter, then you can suggest the same to your app development partner and hire dedicated mobile app developers. Otherwise, you can also leave it to them, since they have experience and know what tech stack is trending.

Additionally, you must ignore the performance and usability of your application while it is in the development phase. You can read and discuss performance-enhancing tips with your app development agency.

Finally, data privacy and security should be your parallel concerns and a topic for discussion in the meetings with the development agency. Discuss how to ensure mobile app security with the team.

Step 4: Testing and Iteration of the Application

Your fitness tracking application is still not ready yet. After your application completes the development phase, it will be in the testing and iteration phases. What is this about, and what must you do during this phase?

This phase consists of thorough testing to identify and fix bugs and usability issues in your fitness application. Developers and designers gather testing feedback from the testers, correct the issues, and send them for retesting to identify any remaining issues. This process is repeated until your application is marked bug-free.

Allow your team to have ample time to test your fitness application. An application launched with poor testing does have a lower success probability compared to an application launched with proper testing. Once your application is ready, it is time for you to move on to the application launch phase.

Read Also: Where Entrepreneurs Should Focus While Their App Development is in Process?

Step 5: Launching Your Fitness App And Preparing A Marketing Strategy

Well, the process of building strategies never stops. It is a continuous process that will lead you towards success. In the launching phase, you must highly focus on a few things.

• Optimising app store details: This is where you must start when you launch your application- app store optimization strategy. Write a great app store description that attracts users. Prepare engaging visuals to explain what your app solves for users with its highlighted features and functionalities.
• App marketing strategy: Your marketing strategy should cater to your website and social media platforms heavily. A poor marketing strategy will affect your success rates.
• Monitor the marketing: With multiple operations executed, you do have to properly monitor how your campaigns are running to build a stronger strategy in the next iteration.

Step 6: Supporting and Updating Your Fitness Tracking App

Do not ignore this step! If you want to gather fitness enthusiasts, you have to keep updating your application. An app is never free of bugs. Neither it restricts itself with the features and functionalities you have determined in the beginning. As your business scales, so do your ideas and the introduction of new things to your fitness tracking app to improve the user’s fitness performance. Ensure the below elements are related to this step:

• Providing ongoing customer support to address user inquiries and issues.
• Monitoring app analytics to track user engagement and identify areas for improvement.
• Releasing regular updates with new features and optimisations to maintain user interest and satisfaction.

This will be an ongoing process. You can hire an in-house team or outsource your complete application needs, including all the support and maintenance, to fitness tracking app developers.

Read Also: In-House or Outsourcing: Which is Better for Mobile App Development?

Final Words

App development is a complex process. But not when you work with a trusted digital transformation partner with a decade of experience in building IoT-based fitness applications. By following the above-mentioned steps in the process of developing fitness tracking applications, you can contribute to boosting the fitness performance of users. This whole idea is a great one, as wearable-based applications are in high demand from audiences throughout the world.

So, why not start it early? Why not execute your idea? We are sure that if you build it right, it will last longer, delivering you the desired success and growth.