Social media has been a massive driver in the public’s attitude toward health and wellness. This has led to wellness app development becoming a very lucrative niche. How promising is this market and what’s the best way to enter it? These are exactly the questions we’ll answer in today’s primer on wellness applications and their specifics.
We will cover the market situation, the types of wellness apps you can make, their core features, and the actual development process. In the end, you will have an understanding of this industry and can then proceed to make your own app.
For that, you can always turn to JetBase. We’ll use our decade of experience for this guide and will gladly apply it to your project as well. But first, learn with us.
What are Wellness Apps?
Before we head into the depths of wellness app development, let’s define what a wellness app is. It helps people meditate, build healthy habits, and simply improve their general well-being, hence the name. Most wellness apps are designed with some sort of directed, therapeutic use in mind. They often rely on professional medical sources and experts to share knowledge and tips.
However, wellness apps don’t necessarily have to be medicine-centric. After all, they’re not always made by medical institutions or with a “patient” in mind. Some wellness apps are focused more on day-to-day improvements, helping your average office worker live healthier. This can come in the form of fitness, mindfulness, or even dieting. We’ll explore the different types a bit later to give you a better idea of this niche’s diversity.
Wellness Apps Market Overview
Forgive the pun, but the market for wellness app development is positively healthy. It’s been estimated that people spend a whopping $450 billion in the US alone, though that includes more than just apps. Meanwhile, the market for mental health apps, part of the wellness section, is a bit less gigantic but, at nearly $2.5 billion, also incredibly strong.
Both of these niches are projected to grow more worldwide. Among the factors influencing this are:
All of these factors have made people more conscious about the way they live and encourage further improvements in one’s lifestyle. This is why it’s a great time to get into wellness app development and ride the wave as the market keeps soaring.
Types of Wellness Apps to Explore
In fact, the market owes its success not just to external factors but to the sheer diversity of wellness apps available to consumers. We’ll cover the main types here to show their versatility. Here’s what this industry offers:
There are more types, but they are less popular, and we’d rather stick to discussing the ones that gather a large audience. After all, you want the app you make to be successful.
Fitness
Types are pretty self-explanatory when it comes to wellness app development. As you can guess, fitness apps aim to help users get in shape and stay fit long-term. This can come in the form of personalized training schedules, live lessons, or exercise trackers. Either way, the focus is entirely on physical activity and its use to lose weight or gain muscle mass.
Mental Health
This type of wellness app development centers around improving the user’s mental health, either through one-on-one therapy sessions, building the right habits, or positive encouragement. Some of these may simply serve as aggregators for mental health professionals. Others are akin to journaling apps, letting users track their state of mind and recovery from mental issues.
Dieting
Wellness app development also includes apps for weight loss, usually based on diet types. There are specific apps for keto dieters and those with dietary restrictions. Their functionality ranges from simple calorie counting to professional dietician consultations. Such apps may require a modern tech stack, as they usually need scanning capabilities as well as good data sync.
Meditation
Last but not least, wellness is synonymous with yoga and meditation for many, so this app type thrives in the market. Offering guided meditations, manuals on the right way to start with the practice, and yoga lessons, these apps help those with experience and total newcomers. They can be one of the easier types to make, as they rarely require tech-intensive features.
Wellness Apps Features to Consider in Development
How do you ensure your app's success, and what functionality do you prioritize in wellness app development? We’ll answer that exact question now, although we won’t focus on the basic features like a user profile, registration, or a support page. Instead, here are the specific or uniquely valuable features in the wellness niche.
Knowledge Bases
Provide enlightening material that helps users learn about the best exercise routines, calorie intake management, or approaches to meditation. This will keep them coming back to the app to consult your information or learn new things. Creating a robust database and a stream of regularly delivered content is a good idea. That way, people can always find what they need yet still return for new insights.
Wearable Integration
For most wellness apps, having an integration with something like a smart watch is invaluable. It can help track a user’s vitals during workouts and meditations, spotting unusual spikes in their pulse. It’s also essential to tracking one’s progress in weight loss and physical activity. So make sure to include it in your wellness app development.
Journals and Goals
Giving users a way to plan and reflect on their wellness journey makes your app the central base of their personal transformation. As a result, they have a reason to open it and, more importantly, a reason to keep doing exercises or therapy sessions. A visible goal is known to help on health journeys, so there is no excuse to omit these from your app.
Personalization
From creating workout plans to setting user-specific notifications and giving out achievements, you want to make sure everyone’s experience is tailored. It gives people something to anchor themselves to, as well as a feeling of being cared for. Personalization should be based on data you collect, which you can then analyze using AI for more precise results.
To sum up, here are the core features we recommend and why they matter:
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Knowledge base | Shows your expertise, gives users incentive to return. |
| Wearables integration | More precise progress tracking. |
| Diaries and goals | Encourages long-term use and successful wellness journeys. |
| Personalized features | Highlights your care for users, provides more accurate assessments for goal setting. |
How to Create a Wellness App: Step-By-Step Process
Now that we have discussed the types of apps and the core features, it’s time to talk about how all of that is made. We’ll take you through wellness app development and its core stages, showing why each of them is equally important.
Step 1: Research and Discovery
Analyze the market and see what you can offer the users to gain a loyal audience. We highlighted the market’s strength before, but that strength also means competition. This is why just another well-designed fitness app won’t cut it. Analysis lets you have a “hook” that gets people interested.
Step 2: UI/UX Design
The importance of an eye-catching and responsive design is hard to overstate. It helps draw users in and prevents them from getting frustrated or confused in the app. Such things are particularly important for wellness apps, where some users may already be in a fragile state. Creating a visually pleasing and serene space makes your app that much more valuable.
Step 3: App Development
This is where the team gets down to business, implementing features, iterating on their own work, and making sure that they meet the initial plan or improve upon it. It’s no easy feat, and this part of wellness app development is definitely the most time-consuming. But it’s exactly this step that ends up giving you a powerful product.
Step 4: Testing
No matter how skilled your team is, you can’t skip the QA stage, as pesky bugs and obscure errors always make their way into an app. Testing allows you to iron out any kinks and understand which parts of your product can be improved to get a better reception from the audience.
Step 5: Launch and Post-Launch
Once wellness app development is complete, it’s time to market and launch your app. Gather a lot of data on users' responses, implement their feedback, and, hopefully, thrive. It’s also best to keep the team available for any post-release updates and bug fixes. This way, you ensure the app's longevity.
The Cost of Developing a Wellness App
All the steps above require investment, as you’ll have to pay the team for wellness app development. Let’s briefly discuss the approximate cost.
If we’re talking about an MVP with basic functionality, the price tag would be around $30.000. If, however, you want extra features with the latest technology, we’d expect the cost to rise to $50.000. It’s important to consider the value each feature generates and weigh its importance for your app. This way, you can structure your budget accordingly and prevent unnecessary expenses while still getting a high-quality wellness app.
For a more detailed breakdown on wellness app development costs, get in touch with us for a free consultation.
Ways to Earn Money From Your Wellness App
Before we finish, let’s talk about recouping your investment in wellness app development. After all, the whole point is to make a successful product, so how do you make money on it? Monetization strategies are simple enough here:
The first two are similar approaches, as you gate off parts of the app behind a paywall, leaving certain content available to everyone. This creates a pipeline where a user learns about the app, uses it for a bit, and, if they like it, can choose to pay for more features or unique content. This can include video lessons, personalized sessions, and AI-based recommendations.
Ads are also straightforward, as you generate income while displaying advertisements to non-paying users. Others can pay a flat one-time fee to remove ads or you can tie that payment into a recurring subscription model. The latter requires some extra weight to it, of course, such as unique functionality, live support, or access to more content.
Wellness App Development Services by JetBase
We’ve talked about wellness apps and their potential for success, but the only way to reach that level is with a high-quality product. For that, you need a development team with experience and deep knowledge of the industry. Thankfully, you’re already on JetBase’s website, and the best team with 10+ years of experience is just a click away.
Our team has experience with all technologies essential for wellness app development, as we’ve worked on mobile apps with wearables integration, AI for data analysis, and large knowledge bases. We know how to not just meet the client’s expectations but surpass them and our core priority is making a product we can be proud of.
So, if you want top-notch quality, a skilled team, and a successful app, you’ve come to the right place. Contact us now and we’ll help you with wellness app development.
