Is Building Wellness Apps Worth the Effort in 2022?

As summer is approaching, getting slimmer and leaner is on everybody’s mind. The odds are that even those folks who did care much for fitness make some plans for exercising. When it comes down to a healthy lifestyle, odds are you’ll see an endless variety of fitness Apps out there which were designed for different purposes. 

Yes, the choice is nearly endless but, overall, Wellness Apps pursue similar goals: provide guidance, motivation, accountability, control over health issues, fitness activities, etc. In fact, a truly successful wellness app cultivates an online community around it. Some wellness apps even tap into something deeper than just traditional marketing. 

Most popular types of wellness apps in 2022:

• Activity tracking 
• Diet & nutrition 
• Workout programs

In this blog post, we’ll talk about why wellness apps keep gaining popularity and why building a wellness app can be a profitable solution.  

What does the future look like for wellness apps in the global market?

The increasing demand for healthy lifestyle digital mentors caused by the covid-19 pandemic is one of the main drivers that boost health & wellness market growth. This goes hand in hand with health issues caused by hectic lifestyles, high blood pressures, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and other stress-related disorders that also had an unfortunate growth in the last couple of years. Which means – anything which is health related has a good chance of selling these days. And the future definitely looks optimistic and bright for health related products. Including healthcare & wellness apps! They have already gained a significant market share in 2022.

Here is how fitness & well-being digital market evolves (statistic is based on the number of downloads in the Google Play store in 2020):

• Workout/weight loss  – 40%
• Diet/nutrition – 26% 
• Fitness trackers (jogging, etc.) – 14%
• Sleep tracking & meditation – 20%

The Statista reports that there is an obvious increasing demand in the market in digital health & well-being apps. A total revenue in this sector already hit $25.38bn in 2022. Without a doubt, this particular segment is expected to grow even more at an annual growth rate of 14.72%. A projected market volume is expected to reach $43.96bn by 2026.

Current predictions from Statista for the future for the Fitness & Well-Being apps market:

• Will increase by 12.52% in 2022 (compared to previous year)
• User penetration will increase by 15.92% by the end of 2025
• The average revenue per user is expected to amount to $26.64

The truth is that the global pandemic keeps encouraging people to engage in yoga, all kinds of meditation practices, online mindfulness therapies, other healthcare activities. So, people keep looking online for effective digital mentorship programs, wellness online courses, and useful healthcare & fitness apps. Therefore, if you have a unique idea to offer to consumers in your niche, you’ve got a great chance to build a successful wellness app in spite of a competitive market!

What are the most popular trends for wellness apps in 2022?

Healthy & active lifestyle is not all about lifting weights and breaking a sweat on cardio machines. Effective fitness that brings results involve other important activities like carbs control, daily exercise routine, healthy habits, and so on. In case you wonder how it is even possible to keep a good track of everything without losing motivation, here comes your smart health & fitness coach – mobile app.   

Hot trends for 2022 related to wellness apps:

Personalization. The McKinsey & Co. has recently stated that about 71% of consumers in the US want to receive personalized interactions via health & fitness apps in 2022. Personalization is a really big thing right now in the mobile development industry and it is one of the ingredients that can make your app go viral. Why? Because personalization equals the ability to customize any app to user specific needs. Personalized programs, which have been already integrated in the app, provide certain users (who have specific health issues) with the right types of workouts. The main goal of these personalized workout programs not to cause more harm to their health and, at the same time, provide effective training. That’s why consumers love app personalization.

Hybrid fitness clubs’ memberships. This means mixing both online and offline training. Today, exercising doesn’t necessarily mean going to a traditional gym. Thanks to online technologies, people can do their workouts with the help of online workout programs, as well as getting help from trainers offline. In this case, hybrid membership provides an undoubting convenience.

Wellness digital devices. Wearable wellness tracking technology is something that almost every fitness fan already got used to and uses daily in 2022. This involves interaction for any and every reason – from measuring your body temperature and heart rate to stress level testing, sleep tracking, etc. 

“Smart-home” gym. This was a hot trend even before the pandemic struck. Of course, the popularity of smart-home gyms have skyrocketed even despite the costly prices. We see quite a few brands winning this market (like MYX Fitness or Peloton) with their popular workout services and home fitness equipment.

Holistic fitness. Mind-body practices have gained a tremendous popularity during the last few years. No secret, many people are still going through lots of stress feeling under pressure of worsened finances and sudden health issues. So, meditation and mind wellness apps go hog wild on downloads these days. 

What are the wellness apps that users keep on downloading in 2022?

Here is 10 wellness apps that already got most downloads this year:

Google Fit  –  a versatile app that lets you track your fitness progress and analyze your stats to see where you need to improve. It has an API that can read in data from other apps like Mi Band, Fitbit, etc. While the user communicates with the device and utilizes its data, Google Fit obtains certain basic information (steps, heart rate, calories mostly) and manages the device. 

Samsung Health – monitors your health by tracking things like heartbeat, sleep, weight, water consumption, etc. It links with your Galaxy Watch so it can track your steps better (this app is easy to use and pretty self explanatory). 

Fitbit – mainly deals with smartwatches and smartbands. App’s users can view progress towards daily goals for steps, distance, calories burned and active minutes, and see trends over time. If you sync your Myfitnesspal account with the Fitbit account (and vice versa), it will help to adjust your daily intake with your activity level.

MyFitnessPal – one of the best all-round calorie counting food logging apps that integrates well with other apps. It works very well for analyzing and improving eating habits and allows users to track both: caloric intake and macronutrient breakdown. 

Calm – assists in meditations but has definitely much more to it. Offers Calm’s masterclasses, sleep stories, Calm Body, Calm Kids, etc. Some users said that this app helped them to get rid of anxiety, learn great tips on meditation habits, stretching, and  lots of different master classes.

Strava – designed for mobile phones, bike computers, smart watches, etc., and meant for mapping out physical activities. Users can share their personal progress with others. Strava can map your route, speed, length of trip, average speed, elevation gained, and calories burnt. This app works on Android 5.0 or above, iPhone,/iPad; watches: Garmin Vivo active 3, Polar M430, Fitbit Versa, Samsung Gear S3, and Apple Watch Series 3. Strava can be connected to Fitbit.

Headspace – works very well for those who have a general problem with procrastination or have a hard time building momentum/consistency since its gamification elements are really compelling for these goals. You get a badge if you meditate for 3 days, 10 days, 30, 90, 180 and 365 in a row and the app records the progress. You also get to send someone a gift subscription when you achieve goals. Many people found this to be really motivating.  

Activity Tracker – track steps using the built-in motion sensors in your phone. Most of modern smartphones come equipped with three main sensors: accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer. The app takes advantage of the sensors to record your activity and display relevant fitness metrics.

Flo – provides incredible functionality & design, as well as some useful tips about health. The app itself was built for menstruation and menopause tracking. It has an ovulation calendar and pregnancy monitoring. Basically, this app monitors women’s health with AI and data science. This app is available in 22 languages. Yay! 

HealthifyMe – tracks users’ diet & exercise regimes, provides advice from health and fitness experts, connects to other healthy lifestyle enthusiasts. Features as calories tracker, meals/exercise regimens tracking are also integrated. You can use this app on mobile phones, PCs, and any other mobile devices. The premium version hooks up users with nutritionists, fitness experts, and yoga instructors allowing 1-1 interactions.

How do you start on building a wellness app from scratch?

What does contribute to making a wellness app successful? Actually, lots of different things like app’s features, UI/UX design, functioning, monetization, compatibility with other different apps/devices. And a smooth interaction with humans, of course! When it comes down to healthcare & well-being apps, effective user interaction becomes the most contributing factor. This instantly makes any health & fitness app popular. Keep in mind that even if you load your mobile app with the most amazing features and impressive designs. But if the app’s users won’t be able to use it for interaction, the chance of it going viral is pretty slim! 

Here is a quick list of other essential aspects that you need to think about, if you want your wellness app to succeed:

• Niche domain you’re catering to your app (physical/mental fitness, meditation, diet/nutrition, workout programs, etc.)
• Required data & information in the respective domain
• Easy navigation & designs that look pretty sleek
• Dedicated market research & analysis 
• Development & design partners
• QA & App testing 
• Accessibility (designed for both iPhone and Android)
• Features (such highlights like movement tracking, community backing, individual training, etc.)
• Assortment (offering a wide choice of exercises with different degrees of difficulty, activities, terms, more) 
• Cost & monetization (decent benefits, flexible monetization, etc.)

So, you want to go ahead and build a mobile app. Can’t decide whether you should choose cross-platform or native development? If you need to launch it fast, then cross-platform app development will drastically reduce the development time. Odds are that users won’t even spot the difference between a native and non-native application.

Other important stuff you need to know about mobile app development:

Apply automation. The key to fast development is the automation of repetitive tasks. To do that, you can apply CI/CD best practices and DevOps to automate your app development process.

Go for ready-made solutions. If you want to build a custom application, you will probably want to have everything custom and built from scratch. However, when you need to test ideas and get to the market quickly. In this case, a more reasonable approach would be to use some open-source code or implement integrations with a reputable third-party vendor.

Choose your MVP wisely. Instead of building a marketplace from scratch, for example, consider choosing Shopify as your MVP. And, instead of creating a custom online chat, you can go with the already made available chatbot.

Use the integrated development environments. There are plenty of tools available that make the development process easier and more smooth. Some of them are Eclipse, JetBrains. These tools are integrated development environments that give room for team collaboration, provide developer toolkits, docker tools, bug detection opportunities, and much more.

Think about modularization. Modularization is an approach in programming that allows breaking up code into chunks based on the task the code performs. This way, it gets much easier to manage the code, write new lines, and handle debugging!

Final Thoughts

The engaging wellness apps not only promote sports, meditations, healthy diets, and exercise programs. They also help those people who want to fight eating disorders and improve their mental health through sports activities. No wonder why the popularity of wellness apps keeps growing in today’s busy market. And sales do look promising.   

What you need to do is to really define aspects that would be necessary for creating a successful fitness app in your particular niche. Start with defining the specific app’s functionalities. Then go all the way to testing and maintaining your app. 

No time to sit idle! Head out to Grinfer and learn from our experts all hints & tricks about how to design a mobile app, create an app from scratch, and then test it. Feel free to use the info which they share in online courses for building your successful app with no coding skills and without having to spend an arm and a leg on app development! 

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