A few years back, fitness became a religion for several people worldwide. Looking at the mass interest, businesses started creating activity tracker apps for helping users keep a track of their fitness activities.
Till now there have been numerous tech innovations, including fitness band, fitness watches, and other fitness mobility solutions. But there is no secret sauce for successful activity tracking app development. Based on the app development experience and experts review we have compiled a list of features that make an app successful.
How these apps make people live healthier?
Staying fit is a dream of every man or woman and even kids. The way people achieve their fitness goals is changing with so many health, fitness and activity tracker apps available in the market. Many health and fitness freaks seek useful activity tracker apps on the app store. There are thousands of activity tracker applications that track your location, step, heart rate, runs, cycling, and more. The data obtained by such apps can act as a motivator and help people achieve their health and fitness goals.
Some fitness tracker mobile applications take data from sensors and provide valuable insights that can help you lose weight, gain muscles, prevent health problems, and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Some apps contain fitness training routines to guide the users and keep a track of the workouts.
How to create an activity tracker app?
The market is flooded with activity monitor apps, but how many out of them are successful? If you’re planning to develop the best activity tracker app with GPS and heart rate monitor application, then read on. You may have many questions in your mind and you’d want to build an app that helps you get success. We have tried to answer the questions related to hardware, app features, and specification that are must make a successful app.
Hardware used in activity tracking mobile apps
Accelerometers, gyroscopes, and compasses
All modern smartphones, watches, and wearables have motion trackers or accelerometers, compasses, and gyroscopes. The gyroscope is a device that determines the orientation of an object, while a compass helps to check the cardinal direction. Accelerometer helps to measure the speed of the movement of an object. Motion trackers help to measure the walking, running, or cycling activities. Fitness and activity tracker apps collect the data and provide valuable insights. Smartwatches and apps can calculate speed, distance travel, and calories burnt. Wristbands and Smartwatches help to track the sleep patterns also using accelerometers.
GPS
A global positioning system in fitness tracker apps is an important feature for runner and athletes. The exact position of uses can be tracked to map their routes and measure the speed using GPS activity tracking.
Optical heart rate monitors
Most of the advanced activity trackers rely on optical sensors. Such devices use LED sensors to track the changes in blood saturation. They pass light through the skin at specific places such as the wrist, ear, forehead, etc. Heart monitors can be divided into two types – active and resting. Some activity tracker with heart rate monitors is designed to monitor heart rate regularly, while some others can be used at the intervals.
Skin temperature
If the user wants to know how much he/she perspires and how their temperature changes during physical activities. The stress levels can be monitored to provide accurate data on the heart rate.
What can an activity tracker app do?
- Keep a tab of your workouts
- Measure distance traveled
- Help you achieve your fitness goals
- Count the calorie intake
- Track your progress
- Monitor heart rate and more
Here are some tips that as a fitness app developer you need to keep in mind, during the process of fitness and activity tracker app development:
1. Sleep tracking feature
Sleep Tracker feature offers a variety of data including activity levels, heart rate, breathing patterns, blood oxygen levels, snoring patterns, and sleep patterns. Such mobile apps use sensors to detect the movement when the user sleeps and provide insights about users’ sleep patterns to help them sleep better. Features like smart wake up that trigger the alarm at a time that is set by them.
Apple and Google have been investing in powerful sleep tracker technology and this can be a good reason to add a sleep tracking feature in your mobile app.
2. Workout and Exercise Tracking
Fitness is a great way to live a healthier lifestyle. Workout and calorie counter mobile app features are used by people to live a healthy and fit life. Wearable’s and fitness apps are already using this feature to help people achieve the fitness goals by recording metrics, workouts, calories consumed and burned, provide coaching for exercise, and healthy recipes. These workout and exercise tracking feature in Android or IOS app can work as a personal trainer helping a newbie learn new workouts and exercise in order to stay fit.
3. Setting goals and Tracking Activity Feature
Users can set goals for their fitness objectives and keep a track of workout plan. Users can calculate the time, distance, speed, or other outputs from the records and keep a check on their activity. These apps can be paired with a lot of devices such as power meters, heart rate monitors, and foot pods to keep pace with your fitness goals. Users can get notified about their workout regimes and track the progress with setting goals and tracking activity apps.
4. Food dietary plan setup and tracking
Food-dietary plan setup and tracking features are a great way to keep an eye on what you eat and calories you consume on a regular basis. People learn new recipes and enjoy your diet plans with such apps. Keep a check on how many calories you intake and maintain food diaries with such apps to start living a healthier lifestyle. Know the nutrients intake in form of fats, vitamins, carbohydrates, protein, and others.
5. Personalized experience
Personalization is the key when it comes to developing a fitness tracking app. When you order coffee, you may prefer to visit the café that can customize your latte the way you want it to. When you tailor an app, you can customize it to attract a wider audience.
Giving users content tailored to their needs and fitness goals can enable you to go a long way. If the app needs user’s personal information like age, weight, height, and gender, better insights of the data can be provided. It will allow users to get more accurate information to improve their health and fitness. One should be able to set personalized goals, save the statistics and compare the performance.
6. Integrate geolocation
If you’re running or cycling, then you would need real-time geolocation tracking to track the activities. Such activity tracker apps use the GPS data to achieve the results. Geolocation has been redefining the way fitness and activity trackers are developed. Integration of geolocation system into health and fitness mobile app development is ideal for the sporting activities in which the participants’ locations change often. Users can track the fitness progression over a period of time. Google Fit and Apple Health are good examples of such apps that rely on movement tracking.
7. Push notifications and reminders
Anyone who works out would not want to miss a session. In our busy lives, many things skip out of our mind. If the app has push notifications, then users can be reminded about the workout sessions. Many healthcare app development companies are investing a lot of money and efforts for offering notification feature to the users. While integrating such a system, remember that it can be a double-edged sword – sending too many notifications can annoy the users and they may uninstall your app or never come back.
8. Social sharing feature
Integration with social media accounts encourages the users to share the data and achievements and it motivates other people to download and use the app too. Nike+ Run Club allows its users to share their runs over Facebook, Path, or Twitter. Friends can cheer them while the users run.
9. Securing the user data through latest in technology
It can be a good idea to provide security for fitness and activity tracker apps. Poor password protection or vulnerable location tracking can turn off the users. Make sure that your app has the right features of security.
Wrapping up
An activity tracker app is ideal for runners, athletes, trainers, dietitians, and fitness freaks. As more and more people are becoming inclined towards health and wellness, it is the right time to build an activity tracker app for the users. Looking for tailor-made solutions for your health, fitness, and activity tracking app? We have got the app development team you need to eliminate your app development challenges, contact us.
