Physical and mental health must be taken care of before attempting to properly do our jobs, maintain our social relations and participate in activities we love. However, we also live in a world where 38.9 percent of people are deemed to be overweight or obese, with 1 in 11 of the world’s adult demographic being prone to diabetes.
In order to combat this startling statistic, we should be mindful of consuming a properly balanced diet composed of all the required nutrients that provide enough calories for the body to function. This means that keeping track of your calories is a vital component of your physical health. After all, if our food intake is imbalanced, it could lead to obesity, which in itself is an invitation for conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and a variety of other cardiovascular diseases.
In these modern times, every aspect of life is affected by technology, and the fitness sector is no different. Various apps and websites are available that can help you estimate your caloric intake, provide tips on how to change your eating patterns, and embrace an overall active lifestyle to attain certain fitness goals.
In this article, we are going to take you into the world of fitness apps, and outline a step-by-step guide on how to build your own calorie counting app like MyFitnessPal that can turn into a great revenue scheme for your business.
What You’ll Learn In This Post
- What is MyFitnessPal?
- Fitness app market trends
- Top alternatives to MyFitnessPal
- Popular MyFitnessPal features
- Step-by-step guide on building a calorie counter app
- How to generate revenue from your platform
What Is MyFitnessPal?
MyFitnessPal is a fitness application that helps you to keep track of the calories you receive from your regular meals, as well as the calories burned through exercise.. This mobile application was released in 2005, and it soon became one of the most popular fitness apps throughout the world.
With a huge database of over 14 million foods and their nutritional information, MyFitnessPal is arguably the best calorie counter app on the market. It is not only limited to measuring calories, but it can also keep track of your water intake, daily steps, and physical activity and exercise, along with your body’s physiological parameters like heart rate and BMI (Body Mass Index).
Fitness App Market Trends
It was estimated that the global fitness and health app industry in 2021 was worth around $5.1 billion. With the current annual growth rate of 17.6 percent, the industry is projected to reach $15.2 billion in valuation by 2028.
As per the report of Forbes magazine in December 2022, the world market has seen awesome fitness apps such as FitOn, Beachbody, Nike Training Club (NTC), and MyFitnessPal, all of which have garnered ample attention from the general public.
Forbes later published another report stating that FitOn went from zero to 6 million users in just 18 months. This verifies the swift scalability of fitness tech in the global market and the numerous possibilities for further innovation. However, understanding these trends before you build your own fitness app is essential in order to wrap your head around the industry and the potential it holds.
Top MyFitnessPal Competitors
There are multiple fitness applications on the market that people love using due to their wide range of features. We have listed some health and fitness apps that compete with MyFitnessPal and have gained a significant user base. Some of these are proprietary apps that only work with particular devices, whereas some work on various phones. Here are some of the major fitness applications, excluding MyFitnessPal, that are enjoyed by the general public.
Google Fit
Google Fit is a cross-platform health-tracking application that was developed by Google in 2014. This application comes built in with Google Pixel phones, and has been their trademark fitness app ever since it was first released.
Google Fit includes an activity tracker that uses the sensors in the device to measure relevant data and assess the physical status of your body. It also comes with a set of APIs (programs that allow data from one application to be used and interpreted by another) that measure various user data through sensors in the phone or Google Watch,allowing data to be integrated with other applications like your workout app.
FitBit
FitBit first came out with their Fitbit Tracker in 2009, and quickly became an instant success. This wearable device revolutionized fitness tracking and encouraged users to be more health conscious. Soon, the company launched an application for smartphones, which made use of physical sensors in the phone to generate health stats like steps taken, BMI, and blood oxygen level.
The California-based company has sold more than 120 million devices and has 29 million users in over 100 countries. FitBit is popular because of its many attractive features like sleep timers, bedtime reminders, all-day activity tracking of physical movement, and a proper numerical review of the body’s fitness level. In 2021, FitBit was acquired by Google for a whopping $2.1 billion, making it one of the biggest names in the health and fitness industry.
Apple Health
Apple Health is an informatics application that was launched by Apple in June 2014 for iPhones, Apple Watches, and iPods. This app is similar to trademark fitness apps provided by other smartphone brands, but since it’s Apple, they have made it stand out by including cutting-edge features. In addition to its clean and sophisticated UI, Apple Health comes with a step counter, measurement of blood oxygen, heart rate, and even hand washing reminders.
With iOS 13, Apple Health also provided a feature for women to track their ovulation and menstrual cycle. Later in the iOS 16 update, it introduced medication logging that reminds users to take medicine and alerts them to the use of potentially harmful drugs.
Popular MyFitnessPal Features
MyFitnessPal includes various features that make it one of the best fitness-based software on the market in 2022. Despite being a member of a competitive industry, MyFitnessPal has stood out as one of the most popular health apps because of their unique approach. If you’re wondering how MyFitnessPal makes money, do take note of these features they provide:
Calorie Counter
A must-have feature for any health-focused application, MyFitnessPal’s top-of-the-line calorie counting system contains nutritional profiles for essentially every common food product. This database ultimately allows users to create a food diary and custom dietary plans that can be incorporated when preparing meals by tracking the proper amount of daily calories.
Fitness Tracker
Another feature that has contributed to MyFitnessPal’s success is its application programming interface that easily interprets data from a variety of fitness hardware like watches and wearables to help users come up with dietary and fitness plans.
MyFitnessPal has a rich database of about 350 different exercises, including cardio workouts, crunches, squats, and yoga, that are based on users’ height, weight, age, and gender. Progress can also be easily visualized in its user interface, and time-bound goals can be set to challenge yourself and aim for a healthier lifestyle.
Community Forum
One of the best features of MyFitnessPal is its interactive community where different people can share the hardships they had to overcome to build a robust physique.
This community can inspire other people to engage in fitness routines and exercises so that their body remains both physically and mentally healthy. The forum also offers healthy discussions with experts who provide suggestions for a balanced nutritional diet and favorable exercise for users who wish to attain a certain type of physique.
4 Steps to Build a Calorie Counting App Like MyFitnessPal
Now that you understand the key features of fitness apps and the potential of this industry, we’ll walk you through the essential steps to follow when building an app like MyFitnessPal of your own.
1. Determine Niché
Determining your target audience is a must when you’re entering a market that is already dominated by big players, as any new business should have an idea about what portion of the market they can capitalize on. Setting your niche ensures you stay focused on a target demographic and allows you to come up with an application that addresses the needs of those people.
Almost all fitness apps have features like an activity tracker or a calorie tracker, but if you design a new application that focuses on the needs of a specific group of people, you need to provide something unique that your user will be likely to invest in.
For example, a health app dedicated to older adults may include a vitals tracker, a minimalistic step counter, and a medication reminder system. On the other hand, if your target demographic consists of young individuals, you may need to offer custom workout and dietary plans in order to make the platform useful for that audience.
2. Design App
The design and visual appeal is one of the most important aspects of any mobile application. A fitness app should be easy to navigate, have features segregated into categories, and an overall fluid design to make it appealing to users.
Creative UI/UX designers should also be hired to create a wireframe of the application, which essentially gives a brief idea about what the fitness app would look like at the end of the developmental stage. Additionally, proper UI/UX designing principles should be implemented that focus on captivating users and motivating them to achieve their goals.
3. Develop App
Finally, the application needs to be developed based on the design concepts that have been finalized in the previous stage. Unless you have your own team of app developers, you’ll need to consult an app development agency to help you build your dream app like MyFitnessPal.
A team of professionals should be hired for their technical and communication skills, as both are critical components of converting ideas into functioning applications. The team would then create a prototype based on your design to give you an idea what your completed app would look like.
4. Test App
A quality assurance (QA) team should always be assigned to perform testing and a security inspection of the app for potential bugs and vulnerabilities before launch. The team can then provide some beta users early access to the app so that they can understand the views of the general public regarding the usability of the fitness platform. The testing team should aim for a bug-free and glitch-free application system that’s ready to be launched and used by the general public.
5. Deliver and Maintain App
Finally, your fitness app should be ready to launch on app stores. Your team should be open to any criticism of the app and analyze the reviews of the users to re-engineer and update the app if necessary. If the app gets immediate attention from the web, you could require some additional resources in terms of storage space, servers and database.
Always make sure the app development services you use has enough room for upgradation in these regards. Any good app based on the cloud these days is scalable, which makes it easier to increase or decrease resources as needed. Also, taking feedback from the users and rolling out updates to patch and fix minor bugs is a must.
Marketing Considerations
Just because you deploy an app to the web doesn’t guarantee that the users will consider using your app. Proper marketing strategies need to be considered for the business to escalate its reach. There are multiple ways to do so, as listed below:
App Store Optimization
ASO (App Store Optimization) is an elementary technique when it comes to the digital marketing of software. People generally search for an app on the web using some easy-to-go keywords that resemble the use of the app. The developer team needs to optimize the app’s descriptions and metadata in the app stores by plugging in relatable keywords, tags and backlinks, while also providing a very readable app description that’s expressed in simple terms for users to understand. ASO helps to boost the traffic for your application like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for a website to generate organic users for your application so that a proper user base gets accumulated under your business enterprise.
Google Search Ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an effective form of digital advertising in 2022. This model is very economical for new businesses to increase their active user base along with total downloads. Google search ads make sure your app gets enough exposure when people search for relatable terms, which helps drive traffic to your page in app stores or your own website.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of the most effective forms of marketing. People use platforms like Instagram and Facebook to learn about new products and are also inclined to try them out. Your app will require a proper social media page to advertise itself on the global stage to reach smartphones worldwide.
Your marketing team could also reach out to famous celebs and influencers from popular media outlets who make fitness-related videos and share their fitness journeys so that their fan base would desire to reach out for this application. This is possibly the best-known way in the digital space these days to actually increase the organic user interaction in your application.
Monetization
After building your fitness app and considering the different marketing strategies, you will now have a functioning application that can start generating income for your business. Like most health and fitness platforms, your calorie counting app should try to self-sustain itself with a proper revenue model. These are some ways you can monetize your application easily and efficiently:
Account Upgrades
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a simple way of delivering applications where users have to pay for access to the software in order to utilize the entire features available. You can incorporate this idea by letting people avail themselves of a “premium plan” that gives access to exclusive content like customized video lessons, virtual personal fitness trainers, and tailored workout plans that are based on personal needs and goals. This way, the application will find a means of earning revenue on its own, ultimately allowing your business and the user base to grow simultaneously.
Paid Recipes
Since one of the key features of this fitness app will be its calorie tracker, users should receive suggested nutritional diets for maintaining their physique. The developer team can capitalize on this by recommending tailored dietary plans and recipes for the user from health experts, pediatricians, and dietitians for a small fee. This will kindle the forum of the application to get proper fitness tips from these experienced professionals who will aim to help out users on a more personal level.
Idea Maker’s Experience In Mobile App Development
Idea Maker is a software and application development company whose main focus is to provide solutions to your digital business needs. We identify the problem before we sell you a product or a service, and work on that idea to generate a possible application that correlates with your vision. Our team of developers, designers, and analysts make sure you have a proper full-fledged application with complete emphasis on the essence of your business idea to make your dream a reality.
Idea Maker promises to guide you through your new business venture by converting dreams into reality. So, what are you waiting for? Schedule a call with us today, and book your appointment to get a free business assessment from our team of expert business analysts and developers and get ready to deploy the fitness app of your dreams. Now is the time to integrate your business idea into the digital world, and there isn’t anyone better in the business than Idea Maker.
