How to Boost User Engagement in Your Fitness App

Physical shape and well-being are a mighty trend in the modern world. While many office workers in the 21st century are suffering from hypodynamia, regular physical exercises and workouts are gaining traction. 

What can help people with their fitness routines in a world where digitalization reigns? Fitness applications that they can easily install on their smartphones and enjoy a healthy lifestyle wherever they are. 

The growth of the fitness apps market confirms the common interest toward these solutions. Thus, the market revenue in this segment is forecasted to reach $8.3 billion in 2025, while the market volume is expected to reach $10 billion by 2029. Indeed, fitness solutions represent a convenient and personalized way to stay in shape, enabling users to access workout routines, nutrition plans, and tracking tools when they want. 

Many entrepreneurs are aspiring to ride on the wave of this rising trend and capture users with their fitness apps. However, the fact of app downloading is only half of success. Retaining consumers and turning them into loyal followers is fundamental to long-term resilience. Loyal users shape a fundamental pillar of your brand. Moreover, retaining existing clients costs 5 to 25 times less than acquiring new ones. Therefore, engagement acts as a powerful driver of sustained business expansion, by reinforcing user retention and loyalty.  

Fitness app engagement helps to build deeper relationships between the brand and users and create lasting emotional connections. What stands behind this concept and how to increase app user engagement in your software product? Let’s explore the answers together.

Understanding fitness app user engagement

Before we dive deeper into the app’s engagement strategy, let’s explore the concept of user engagement and its effect on business triumph. 

What is the fundamental thing that characterizes engaged consumers? It’s the combination of emotional and rational factors in their choices. If the practical and emotional values inherent in a solution are relevant to user expectations, they are likely to get accustomed to it and even love it.

Therefore, a successful fitness application means more than a tool for daily activity observation. It becomes a part of lifestyle, an indispensable assistant for users’ workout regime. Such applications add consistent value and accompany individuals in their fitness endeavors.

From the business owner’s standpoint, highly engaged clients bring many more advantages than the total number of app downloads. They stay with your brand for a long time, driving real business value, exploring the app’s opportunities, trying paid options, and even becoming brand endorsers. What does the owner get? Higher revenues, deeper relationships with consumers, and a stronger competitive stance.  

Ultimately, building mobile app engagement is a wise investment that brings powerful returns in the long term. Emotional involvement turns customers into loyal users by shaping connections stronger than merely practical value. Engaged consumers accept your app for a long time and recommend it to others. Once you have captured them emotionally, your task is to nurture their engagement and fuel their eagerness to stay with your brand. Enrich your app with personalized interactions, regular updates, breakthrough features and other engagement drivers. This is a way to spur resilient growth, consumer retention, and profitability.

Why do users abandon fitness apps?

After we have discussed the essence and benefits of fitness app engagement, let’s consider the flip side – what makes users drop off? Here are several primary reasons stemming from how the app is built.

Unsatisfactory UX design

The user interface, navigation, and overall interactions with your fitness solution determine the consumer's desire to proceed with your app. Even the highest quality content will fail with poor user experience. Unclear menus, confusing navigation, and unfriendly interfaces impede in-app engagement.

Imagine that a user has to fight through basic interactions, failing to locate or initiate the needed menus or buttons. Furthermore, many apps are presented as simple and joyful, while in fact, they are overloaded with excessive elements that mislead users. Besides, some fitness apps run well on smartphones but are sluggish on other devices, like wearables.

All these flaws downgrade user experience, cause frustration, and destroy motivation. 

Therefore, fitness app developers should prioritize intuitive interactions and minimize the load on the consumer’s brain. A fitness app should urge a user to work physically, not mentally. Natural guidance, smooth transitions, and clear visuals are fundamental to a straightforward experience. An alluring app anticipates what users need and highlights how to get where they want.

Superfluous notifications

While in-app communications are good, intrusive and annoying alerts often become the reason why users deny an application. Therefore, when creating a fitness app, entrepreneurs should cautiously plan the use of notifications, allowing only the necessary and relevant ones. 

What characterizes an appropriate notification?

Ideally, it would contain actual and personalized information, introduced in a visually appealing manner. Moreover, users should have the opportunity to adjust the frequency and types of notifications they are eager to receive. 

Insufficient optimization

Modern consumers easily switch across devices, based on their needs and preferences. Effective apps for fitness should guarantee responsiveness on various devices and operating systems. A smartphone or wearable, Android or iOS, an app that provides flexibility of choice will win.

Nevertheless, multiple fitness solutions have considerable room for improvement in this sense. A lack of smartwatch and tablet experiences often leads to inconsistent training sessions and frustrates users.  

These undesired occurrences, however, can be avoided by focusing on app responsiveness. When creating a top fitness app, entrepreneurs should consider tailored designs and performance for each device. Messy interfaces or slow loading times can disrupt workouts, making users switch to other solutions. Conversely, if the application runs flawlessly wherever an individual initiates it, it will fulfill its role as a reliable companion. 

Strategies to Increase User Engagement

Based on our vast experience, we’ve selected a set of methods to increase app user engagement. 

Personalization backed by the AI opportunities

In today’s business world, personalization is a must-have. AI technology can come on hand here as intelligent tools are capable of collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data to give you a base for strategic insights. If you smartly craft the user path, enriching it with individual recommendations and tailored interactions, you’ll gain a competitive advantage and motivate consumers to stay with your solution.

The primary things that should be tailored to individual demands include:

• Workout and training plans;
• Recommendations;
• Reminders and rewards based on personal goals and achievements.

A highly personalized approach enables you to differentiate your fitness app, raise value and relevance, and build customer bonds that reinforce long-term relationships.

For instance, Freeletics adjusts exercise plans in real time according to the user’s performance feedback and fitness level. Nike Training Club assesses individuals’ performance to recommend workouts that match their individual tasks and recovery needs.

Gamification and challenges

Gamification is a mighty trend in many industries and applications. When standard app features are introduced in an entertaining manner, they become more fun and create an engaging and motivating journey. All user activities take the form of a game with competitions and rewards, like points or badges. Every completed task is marked with a prize or incentive, encouraging further participation and long-term loyalty.

How does gamification benefit your business?

• Increases retention since users are eager to stay until they complete challenges;
• Spurs revenue through various monetization strategies, such as in-app purchases: users become more likely to access exclusive features or amplify their progress through paid opportunities.

For instance, a Zombies, Run! app turns running into a thrilling adventure where participants escape zombies, collect supplies, and explore story chapters. Fitocracy rewards workouts with points, achievements, and levels, urging users to surpass their gains.

Social sharing and community building

The spirit of the contest is a powerful fuel for further accomplishments. Furthermore, the opportunity to share one’s success with others reinforces satisfaction and spurs motivation. Therefore, communities can provide valuable support. When building a fitness application, remember to consider the following possibilities: 

• Workout sharing;
• Competing with friends;
• Joining fitness communities.

By shaping a group of enthusiasts around their product, businesses can elevate not only engagement but also brand awareness, making social features a capable marketing tool. Thus, user impressions and experiences shared on social media raise visibility, attract potential users, and work as an advertising channel. 

Community building is a potent means to boost engagement and loyalty as it fosters user connections. The feeling of belonging to an exclusive group is hard to overestimate in terms of behavioral effects. Supported by their counterparts, consumers become more involved and goal-focused to actively continue their journey with your fitness app.

Thus, the Nike Run Club integrates social sharing, virtual challenges, and exclusive events to encourage runners and reinforce community bonds. MyFitnessPal establishes community forums and groups where users exchange tips, discuss nutrition and workouts, and support each other. Peloton offers classes with integrated chat, where participants can interact, motivate each other, and form virtual workout groups.

Push notifications & smart reminders

Push notifications are short messages sent to users’ mobile devices. Their role is to inform users of relevant news, provide reminders, precious information, and more. They are a great way to spur in-app user engagement and deliver additional value. However, for this purpose, they must be leveraged smartly and strategically.

Your in-app notifications and reminders should be focused on improving consumer experience instead of irritating users. Plan your push notifications thoughtfully since superfluous or irrelevant messages can ward off users and lead to app abandonment. The essentials of success are personalized and timely messages that enhance the user journey. They can remind users of uncompleted activities, deliver tailored content, or notify them of updates. 

To arrange smart notifications appropriately, you should explore your target community, study their preferences, and familiarize yourself with their lifestyle. This information will allow you to plan the right time and frequency, compose appealing texts, and establish a nice sound to integrate the notifications into the users’ routine rather than interrupting them. Developers can also include a touch of humor or other emotions to engage users without annoyance. Essentially, it’s about finding the right balance between maintaining continual interactions and removing unnecessary fuss to elevate user delight and app retention.

For example, Nike Training Club sends reminders for planned workouts, urging users to keep sticking to their fitness routine. MyFitnessPal notifies users about timely logging meals and water consumption, helping them to move toward their nutrition goals. Peloton sends messages that remind users of upcoming live classes and special events, encouraging them to join and stay within the workout community. 

Flawless user journey

Delightful user experience is a paramount factor necessary for any application. When developing a fitness app, put effort into constructing a seamless and effortless user path. It would repay with the increasing app usage and low abandonment. 

What does a smooth UX mean? 

It includes free and clear interactions with the product, convenient way through menus, searches, and levels, and overall pleasure from everyday sports. Thus, fitness enthusiasts can attain their goals without any technical impediments. To elevate the UI/UX, you should make navigation intuitive, design - minimalistic, and an interface - natural. Offer personalized dashboards, clear guidelines, smooth run on wearables, prompt load times, and a pleasing visual design. Such an arrangement smoothly guides users through fitness plans and progress observation. 

An engaging and thoughtful interface will smoothly guide your audience through their fitness plans, and they will be eager to experience consistent and efficient workout routines.  

For example, Strava prioritizes a clean design and data-oriented layout. Straightforward tracking tools like maps and progress charts help runners observe their progress intuitively. Fitbod realized a curious approach in a card-based design that allows users to change exercises while remaining on their workout track.

Subscription & reward models

People love when their achievements are appreciated. Rewards add self-confidence and motivation. You can establish a system that encourages achievement and provides prizes for each significant accomplishment. 

Subscription models imply various formats of user participation in fitness activities with your app. When building a fitness app, you can utilize:

• Freemium model, when basic workouts are available for free, while premium plans, personalized coaching, or exclusive content can be accessed for extra payment or after certain achievements.
• Tiered plans provide different pricing tiers based on the availability of features, including AI-enabled programs, live classes, or individual coaching.
• Family & group plans invite numerous users to jump in under one subscription, reinforcing group participation.

You are free to select the most relevant subscription approach. However, in any case, think of a distinct reward for each accomplishment. Users should have simple opportunities to set goals and observe progress. These could include visual tracking tools like charts and achievement badges. Furthermore, you can arrange loyalty programs, discounts, and special prizes that would add excitement and elevate retention.

By applying reward and subscription models wisely, you’ll not only spur engagement but also obtain additional revenue streams.

Generally, you can select one or more engagement strategies to raise the allure and efficiency of your app for fitness. However, it’s crucial to keep an eye on how they work and continually analyze user feedback and core business indicators. Based on performance data, measuring and optimizing engagement strategies is a driving force of long-term resilience. It helps keep your product competitive and successfully adjust it to an altering environment.

User engagement in fitness app development: In conclusion

User engagement is a mighty fuel to your business expansion. You can retain clients with numerous engagement strategies, such as a personalized approach, gamification, community building, and accomplishment rewards. Once you’ve selected your engagement methods for fitness application development, continue evaluating their business value and refining them to remain on a surge.

SDA is a fitness app development company with tremendous experience and profound tech knowledge. Our expert team can assist you with your project, from goal evaluation to post-launch support and upgrades. 

Contact us to share your product concept, and we’ll take on the technical part to create a highly competitive and appealing solution.